tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/cultural-policy-7656/articles
Cultural policy – The Conversation
2023-08-31T20:00:11Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208021
2023-08-31T20:00:11Z
2023-08-31T20:00:11Z
Under-counting, a gendered industry, and precarious work: the challenges facing Creative Australia in supporting visual artists
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540941/original/file-20230803-21-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C14%2C4909%2C4843&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Earl Wilcox/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Arts Minister Tony Burke launched the bill introducing Creative Australia, the new organisation at the heart of the Revive Cultural Policy, he did so with <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F26698%2F0005%22">a bold statement</a>:</p>
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<p>Creative Australia recognises that artists and creatives throughout our great landscape, from metropolitan cities to the red desert, are workers. In exchange for what they give us, they should have safe workplaces and be remunerated fairly.</p>
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<p>In 2022, we surveyed 702 visual and craft artists and arts workers, making this the largest single scholarly survey of this cohort in Australia to date. We were interested to find out the ways artists combined income from various sources, within and beyond their art practice. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.visualartswork.net.au/">Our new research</a> identifies three key areas that need to be addressed to ensure fair remuneration for all visual and craft artists. We need to acknowledge the likely under-counting of the number of artists in Australia, the gendered nature of this population, and the complex ways artists earn an income.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/arts-are-meant-to-be-at-the-heart-of-our-life-what-the-new-national-cultural-policy-could-mean-for-australia-if-it-all-comes-together-198786">'Arts are meant to be at the heart of our life': what the new national cultural policy could mean for Australia – if it all comes together</a>
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<h2>Counting the artists</h2>
<p>It is impossible to provide a single estimate of the number of visual and craft artists in Australia as different surveys use different definitions of “artist”.</p>
<p>According to the 2021 ABS census, there are 6,793 <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/tablebuilder?opendocument&navpos=240.">visual art and craft professionals in Australia</a>, 64% of whom identified as female. </p>
<p>But the criteria used to count being an artist as a profession in the census require art to be the “<a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/income-and-work-census/2021#key-questions-in-2021-census">main job</a>” of the respondent in the week before the census. This leads to an under-counting of artists, as most visual art and craft artists support themselves through other work – either related to their artwork, such as in academia or in arts management, or in an entirely different field. As such, they would not be identified in the census as visual or craft artists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman weaving." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540942/original/file-20230803-25-d2dnt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Many artists are excluded from the census, because art making is not their ‘main work’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ALAN DE LA CRUZ/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>A more accurate estimate is likely provided by the ABS Survey of Cultural Participation. In this survey, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/cultural-and-creative-activities/latest-release">106,000 Australians</a> reported earning some income from a visual art activity, and 94,800 from a craft activity, in the 2021–22 financial year. These figures cannot be totalled as those engaged in both activities were counted separately. Nonetheless, at a minimum the survey identifies an additional 100,000 visual and craft artists not captured within the census definition. </p>
<p>If all artists are to be remunerated fairly, it is critical Creative Australia ensures support mechanisms extend to the around 100,000 visual and craft artists for whom art making is not their primary occupation. </p>
<h2>The gendered nature of the industry</h2>
<p>In our survey, we did not impose any requirements that respondents devote a certain amount of time to their art making, nor earn a particular level of income. Instead, we left it open to respondents to self-identify as an artist. </p>
<p>This inclusive definition produced a much higher proportion of female artists than the census, with 73% identifying as female. This aligns with <a href="https://sheila.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2019_COUNTESS_REPORT_FINAL.pdf">other estimates</a> of the gender breakdown of the industry. The ABS Cultural Participation Survey estimated 67% of people who earned income from visual art activity and 79% who derived income from craft activity were female.</p>
<p>In our survey, 3.1% of respondents identified as non-binary, and so we were not able to collect enough data for further analysis of this cohort.</p>
<p>We found a distinctive experience of female artists compared to their male counterparts, suggesting policy responses need to recognise the gendered nature of art making. </p>
<p>Female artists in our survey reported an average annual income of A$8,507 from their arts practice, compared to the annual income reported by male artists of $22,906. </p>
<p>While earning 37% of male artists’ earnings, women spent 76% of the time male artists spend on their practice (29 hours compared with 38 hours per week). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man paints." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540944/original/file-20230803-29-ypizoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">On average, male artists earn more than female artists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Francisco/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>So, male artists earn more from their art practice than female artists, and proportionately even more when accounting for the hours spent on their practice. </p>
<p>Our research suggests the shadow cohort of visual and craft artists who do not show up in census results are predominantly female. The gendered nature of the visual arts and craft sector must be front of mind in the design of remuneration policies for artists undertaken by Creative Australia.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gender-pay-gap-is-wider-in-the-arts-than-in-other-industries-87080">The gender pay gap is wider in the arts than in other industries</a>
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<h2>How artists earn a living</h2>
<p>For many artists, the practice of visual art and craft making does not readily align with traditional concepts of an employee and is not attached to a single workplace. </p>
<p>In our survey, only 30% of respondents spent 100% of their working time as an artist, with 60% receiving at least some income from non-artistic work within and outside the arts sector.</p>
<p>The life of an artist is more likely to look like a combination of multiple part-time, casual and contract jobs, with occasional grant income and artwork sales. </p>
<p>Many visual art and craft artists conduct their practice from their home and operate as a sole trader. For many, outside work is the only way they can support their art practice. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people in an office" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540943/original/file-20230803-29-nsdn8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Most artists support themselves with a job other than art making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arlington Research/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>Achieving the goal of remunerating artists fairly is not just about payment for art making. It is also about the other work these artists must undertake to make a living, much of which consists of part-time employment elsewhere in the arts and cultural sector. </p>
<p>Any policy interventions from Creative Australia to support visual and craft artists’ incomes will need to take a sector-wide approach.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/male-artists-dominate-galleries-our-research-explored-if-its-because-women-dont-paint-very-well-or-just-discrimination-189221">Male artists dominate galleries. Our research explored if it’s because ‘women don’t paint very well’ – or just discrimination</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace McQuilten receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project 'Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.'</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chloë Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project 'Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.'</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Lye receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)"</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate MacNeill receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marnie Badham receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project 'Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.' She is affiliated with Res Artis. </span></em></p>
Any policy interventions from Creative Australia to support visual and craft artists’ incomes will need to take a sector-wide approach.
Grace McQuilten, Associate professor, RMIT University
Chloë Powell, Research Assistant, RMIT University
Jenny Lye, Associate Professor/Reader in Economics, The University of Melbourne
Kate MacNeill, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne
Marnie Badham, Associate Professor, School of Art, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198247
2023-02-14T13:41:41Z
2023-02-14T13:41:41Z
What is Mondiacult? 6 take-aways from the world’s biggest cultural policy gathering
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508369/original/file-20230206-21-8bineg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">hadynyah/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Culture’s status in global society got a major boost in 2022 when it was recommended to become its own sustainable development goal. This happened at the Unesco World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – called <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/mondiacult2022?TSPD_101_R0=080713870fab2000a09e1f590eee9236224b49b65b35b132c616cc394977b0a02ac2e62027c474a20861e610e0143000765baf2107ff32468755177504b7b9a252592c01e65570cbe751e36ef19eb1605e90d2f17ad9e80a512b2762ca6cb961">Mondiacult</a>. The world’s most important cultural policy gathering took place in Mexico City 40 years after its first edition in the same city. The 2022 meeting gathered 2,600 participants including 135 government ministers, 83 non-governmental organisations, 32 intergovernmental organisations and nine UN agencies. </p>
<p>Mondiacult is important because it’s a decision-making meeting that helps shape the world’s cultural policies and especially the relationship between culture and development. What was clear is that there is a shift in this relationship. Culture does not only contribute to sustainable development but is one of development’s components. </p>
<p>Culture aids <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">sustainable development goals</a> in areas like health, education and environment. For example, local customs and traditional knowledge are relevant in promoting health programmes. Local and traditional products are useful for sustainable production. Indigenous knowledge helps develop environmental practices to fight climate change. </p>
<p><a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">Sustainable development goals</a> – like clean water and quality education – are the United Nations (UN) blueprint for a better future for all. At Mondiacult, culture was raised to the status of being its own sustainable development goal. A careful reading of the <a href="https://www.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/fichiers/2022/10/6.MONDIACULT_EN_DRAFT%20FINAL%20DECLARATION_FINAL_1.pdf">final declaration</a> offers several reasons why:</p>
<h2>1. Culture can fight climate change</h2>
<p>Culture can contribute to the reduction of climate change’s negative impact. Ecological organisations and other stakeholders are now interested in discovering the usefulness of cultural practices and other local know-how to preserve the environment. Ancient communities faced climate crises and developed their own resilient practices rooted in cultural heritage. That is why concepts like indigenous knowledge systems have emerged. </p>
<h2>2. Digital must be ethical</h2>
<p>The transition from analogue to digital has become an important aspect in the production, distribution and consumption of cultural and creative goods and services. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the value of digital and online spaces. Augmented reality, for example, enables exploring museum collections from a phone or computer. Virtual reality enables the visiting of historical monuments. Blockchain technology and artificial intelligence have grown hugely, but bring new ethical concerns. Which is why Unesco has adopted a set of <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000380455_fre.locale=fr">recommendations</a> on the ethics of artificial intelligence.</p>
<h2>3. Cultural diversity matters</h2>
<p>Our world is made of many different cultures. Acknowledging and accepting this cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, in Mondiacult 2022’s view. For the cultural ministers gathered in Mexico City, cultural diversity is the “founding principle of all of Unesco’s cultural conventions, recommendations and declarations. It cannot be separated from respect for human dignity and all fundamental human rights.” </p>
<h2>4. Cultural objects must be returned</h2>
<p>Another “ethical imperative” is the return of cultural assets to countries that they were looted from. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/benin-bronzes-what-is-the-significance-of-their-repatriation-to-nigeria-171444">Benin bronzes</a> case is a good example – ancient cultural objects stolen from Nigeria by colonial forces who are now slowly returning them. This restitution is crucial because it is supposed to “promote the right of peoples and communities to enjoy their cultural heritage … to strengthen social cohesion and the intergenerational transmission of cultural heritage”. It would be morally unfair to deny restitution, according to Mondiacult 2022. </p>
<h2>5. Culture is a global public good</h2>
<p>Culture is “our most powerful global public good”, <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382082_eng">wrote</a> Unesco official Ernesto Ottone:</p>
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<p>Today, more than ever, we need to find meaning, we need universality, we need culture in all its diversity. </p>
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<p>Culture is reaffirmed as the “existential foundation” of humanity in this period of multiple crises on the planet. Now that a high-level meeting like Mondiacult has affirmed that culture is a public good, it must be preserved in the same way as the environment is.</p>
<h2>6. Culture is a development goal in itself</h2>
<p>Most significant is a new momentum to give culture a central place in the global development agenda. Before Mondiacult, Unesco’s aim was to convince the world’s policymakers that culture can <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000371557.locale=fr">contribute</a> significantly to achieving sustainable development goals. Now, Mondiacult 2022’s ambitious final <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/mondiacult-2022-states-adopt-historic-declaration-culture?TSPD_101_R0=080713870fab2000f74c4eb59493c567f3e18b1c8872e37ae64990e839cf3668f57e49286fb9f65f08249d61f71430003d79c69a210fba638ee45377843ff76e26f08becf03cf6dff247f25bfdb1b4b06649a8fba6fb9883fadb4106e6dc9543">declaration</a> affirms:</p>
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<p>We call on the UN secretary general to firmly anchor culture as a global public good and to integrate it as a specific goal in its own right in the development agenda beyond 2030.</p>
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<p>The cultural goal is to achieve “more harmony between peoples and communities”. This could involve the promotion of cultural diversity, the return of cultural assets, increased budgets for creative activities and other policies. </p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>If the UN adopts this option of culture being a sustainable development goal, the post-2030 sustainable development agenda will have new content. This will change how development agencies deal with culture and how universities teach the relationship between culture and development. The result could be more funding for culture, which is increasingly underfunded by governments. </p>
<p>In addition, making cultural diversity an “ethical imperative” should play a role, if possible, in discussions about the commercialisation of cultural goods and services and the digital transition. </p>
<p>Next to come will be Mondiacult’s conditions of implementation. This is a follow-up action plan that should mobilise stakeholders to embrace Mondiacult’s outcomes ahead of the 2024 UN <a href="https://www.un.org/en/common-agenda/implementation">Summit of the Future</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The huge gathering of policymakers focused on culture’s crucial role in sustainable development.
Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, Associate Professor, University of Kinshasa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188741
2022-08-18T01:26:02Z
2022-08-18T01:26:02Z
What good is a new national cultural policy without history?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479267/original/file-20220816-18-quy9wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C2580%2C1564&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">National Library of Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alongside much else that is being revised, reimagined or recast by the Albanese government, Australia is to have a new <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/documents/creative-australia-national-cultural-policy">cultural policy</a>. Consultation has involved town hall meetings and a call for submissions. The arts minister, Tony Burke, has established five review panels to consider feedback. </p>
<p>First Nations artists and culture are at the centre of Burke’s invitation. The emphasis on the artist not just as creator but as worker responds to the pandemic’s devastating impact on the already-parlous circumstances in which artists and writers often live and work. </p>
<p>The other pillars of this cultural-policy-in-the-making highlight the diversity of stories and artists, building audiences and the strengthening of cultural institutions. </p>
<p>The review panels are brimming with respected and innovative <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/national-cultural-policy-review-panels">creators and producers</a>, with decades of collective experience. </p>
<p>But their coverage of the sector is patchy. Our concern as historians is with history, publishers and the “GLAM” sector – galleries, libraries, archives and museums. </p>
<p>While there is representation from galleries and collecting institutions on the panels, there is not a single historian, publisher or archivist whose feedback will help shape Australia’s cultural policy.</p>
<p>Given the importance of history in defining our sense of national selfhood, and the role publishers, libraries, archives and museums play in preserving, collecting and presenting Australian histories and stories, these fields being absent from the national cultural policy panels is a disappointing oversight. </p>
<h2>A sense of belonging</h2>
<p>History and historians play a crucial role in Australian culture. They are foundational to other fields in the arts, with historical research often underpinning film, theatre, literature and even, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bangarras-dark-emu-is-beautiful-but-lacks-the-punch-of-its-source-material-98628">on occasion</a>, dance. </p>
<p>A government serious about implementing a cultural policy for the future must make space for history and historians in the formulation of that policy.</p>
<p>History is both a scholarly pursuit and a widely shared leisure activity. Millions of Australians visit museums, archives, libraries and galleries each year, both <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/museums-libraries-and-galleries/impact-our-national-cultural-institutions">in person and online</a>. </p>
<p>Family history has become much more than just a popular hobby. It is integral to people’s sense of self and belonging, with First Nations people and migrant communities increasingly active. </p>
<p>Australians are involved in history and heritage in their communities. These activities are integral to identities of people and places, and especially regional places. They keep people active and connected with one another. </p>
<p>Community history and heritage needs to be at the heart of a democratic and inclusive cultural policy. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-heritage-family-history-trumps-museums-144507">When it comes to heritage, family history trumps museums</a>
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<h2>The place of history</h2>
<p>Historians feature in our media as expert commentators. They speak at writers’ festivals and in documentaries. </p>
<p>They publish histories and biographies that attract readers outside the circle of their colleagues and students. Some make podcasts and television programs. </p>
<p>Historians provide policy advice to government. They judge literary prizes and contribute to the making of the school curriculum. Historians work with community groups, including with Indigenous communities in native title cases, and they advise on cultural heritage. </p>
<p>The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards include a dedicated prize for Australian history. History is one of five subjects mandated in the national curriculum. Days of national commemoration, from Sorry Day to Anzac Day, mark significant events in Australia’s collective national memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Morning at the Australian National Maritime Museum, overlooking Pyrmont Bay. Features lighthouse, moored boats and modern high-rise buildings. Some visitors around." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479271/original/file-20220816-22-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Collecting institutions, like the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, represent a priceless possession of the nation.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both state and Commonwealth governments fund institutions which collect and preserve Australian history. At the federal level, the <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/museums-libraries-and-galleries/impact-our-national-cultural-institutions">national cultural institutions</a> perform this work. Together with the public broadcasters the ABC and SBS, they represent a priceless possession of the nation. </p>
<p>Writing and knowing Australian history would be impossible without them, and we would be a different – and lesser – people without such places. </p>
<h2>Struggling institutions</h2>
<p>Governments from both sides of politics have subjected these institutions to humiliating funding cuts. Labor first created “efficiency dividends” to reduce expenditure on our national cultural institutions in the late 1980s. </p>
<p>This initiative meant that every year, they received less funding, which a 2019 parliamentary business committee found had a “<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/National_Capital_and_External_Territories/NationalInstitutions/Report">significant and compounding effect</a>”. </p>
<p>It got worse in 2015-16, when the Turnbull government disastrously imposed an additional 3% “<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/National_Capital_and_External_Territories/NationalInstitutions/Report">efficiency target</a>” on these cultural institutions. </p>
<p>Such funding cuts no longer drive “efficiencies”. They diminish the quality of the user experience. Researchers at the National Archives report <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/the-wait-of-history/">long delays</a> – sometimes years – in gaining access to records that under the law of the land are supposed to be made available within 90 business days. </p>
<p>Our national cultural institutions no longer have sufficient funds to preserve the collections they maintain on our behalf. </p>
<p>The Archives only received an urgent injection of funds to preserve unique audio-visual records after a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/national-archives-need-support-to-preserve-our-unique-history-20220112-p59nl1.html">public campaign</a> in 2021. </p>
<p>In June, it was reported the maintenance backlog at the National Gallery of Australia is estimated to be <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7768966/nga-needs-67m-for-urgent-building-repairs/">A$67 million</a>. The ABC recently announced plans to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/08/abc-to-abolish-58-librarian-and-archivist-jobs-with-journalists-to-do-archival-work">slash</a> specialist archives and librarians. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A James Turrell work at the gallery." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479277/original/file-20220816-26-3peekd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The maintenance backlog at the National Gallery of Australia is estimated to be A$67 million.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cuts to funding came with the leaching of historical expertise from the boards and councils established to advise the national cultural institutions. </p>
<p>In the past, many distinguished historians have served on these bodies. Today, they are more likely to be defined by political appointees.</p>
<p>As Tony Burke commented <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/culture-in-crisis-arts-minister-tony-burke-slams-decade-of-neglect-20220630-p5ay3z.html">recently</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t see how you have a national museum with a board that does not include a single historian. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Neither do we. We further urge a stronger presence for history in cultural policy generally – and right now for the presence of historians in the constructing of a new policy document. </p>
<p>History is the very kind of creative and democratic practice that must be central to any reimagining of Australia in an age of anxiety and of promise.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-history-up-in-flames-why-the-crisis-at-the-national-archives-must-be-urgently-addressed-159804">Our history up in flames? Why the crisis at the National Archives must be urgently addressed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is the Vice-President of the Australian Historical Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno is President of the Australian Historical Association.</span></em></p>
There is not a single historian, publisher or archivist on the review panels whose feedback will help shape Australia’s new cultural policy
Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University
Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169822
2021-10-27T02:50:10Z
2021-10-27T02:50:10Z
Can artists revive dead city centres? Without long-term tenancies it’s window dressing
<p>After 18 months of lockdown, the City of Melbourne is understandably anxious to get people back to the CBD and inner areas. Commercial vacancy rates are high, international student numbers have plummeted and the streets are dead. </p>
<p>The council’s $A2.6 million <a href="https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/news-and-media/Pages/Creatives-to-fill-shopfronts-and-bring-back-the-buzz.aspx">plan to provide</a> “creatives and entrepreneurs” with “flexible, short-term licence agreements” should, however, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/empty-shops-an-opportunity-for-creative-revival-but-planning-is-key-20201022-p567im.html">ring alarm bells</a>. </p>
<p>You can’t just add instant culture to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1877916614000447">activate an area</a>. These kinds of efforts are not just exploitative, there is no evidence that they work. </p>
<p>Temporary use arrangements in Australia keep artists on the edge of being thrown out at any time. </p>
<p>As the council CEO Justin Hanney <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/one-in-five-cbd-shops-vacant-but-some-are-seizing-opportunity-20211019-p5915s.html">notes</a>, artists will have the space month-to-month and the properties can be “taken back by the landlords/owners at any point in time”. </p>
<p>Serious cultural producers will tell you one of the most important components of their ability to work is security of tenure.</p>
<p>Perhaps unwittingly, though, the shopfront program may hold promise. Economists predict the current <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/short-term-pain-but-economists-predict-long-term-gain-for-melbourne-cbd-20211019-p5915h.html">economic slump</a> will persist for at least a year, meaning temporary users will likely be looking at a more meaningful time frame. </p>
<p>In addition, Lord Mayor Sally Capp’s <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/one-in-five-cbd-shops-vacant-but-some-are-seizing-opportunity-20211019-p5915s.html">extension of the program</a> to “performance, new retail pop-ups, entrepreneurial activities, even community radio stations” opens out the field.</p>
<p>The program is part of the joint state government and council <a href="https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/news-and-media/Pages/%24100-million-boost-to-Melbourne%E2%80%99s-reopening.aspx">A$100m recovery fund</a>, in addition to the state’s <a href="https://creative.vic.gov.au/news/2021/new-targeted-support-for-creative-workers-and-organisations">$A15 million package</a> to support the hard hit creative sector. </p>
<p>These are positive initiatives. In crisis there is opportunity. Now, let’s think about how best to use this opening. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-covid-all-but-killed-the-australian-cbd-147848">How COVID all but killed the Australian CBD</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="empty arcade in Melbourne's CBD" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427650/original/file-20211020-66011-1df64vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melbourne’s streets emptied during the city’s lockdowns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/melbourne-australia-12-april-2020-one-1702544935">Shutterstock.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What do artists actually need?</h2>
<p>Arts, music, performance and other cultural activities should be treated as neither saviours nor indicators of a city’s economic health. They exist in their own right, with many spin-off and flow-on effects for the city including associated anti-racist, anti-fascist, LGBTI+-welcoming, social, environmental and political activism. </p>
<p>The strength of a city’s cultural scene is not linked to its economic success. The exception is that the more successful the city becomes, the more the scene is at risk.</p>
<p>Some of the world’s best cultural scenes are in poorer cities: New Orleans, Chicago, Berlin. Some of the world’s best scenes that have since died were in cities that became rich: New York, London, Paris. In all of these cities, along with cities like Austin, Seattle, Brisbane and Melbourne, two key conditions existed for the seeds of those scenes to be sown. Plenty of space and cheap rent.</p>
<p>Cities known for their arts and cultural activity today make a point of supporting those scenes – such as in New Orleans with a stream of world famous festivals employing only local artists and paying them well – or still have land available for cultural use and cheap housing, such as in Chicago and Berlin.</p>
<p>But Berlin is changing rapidly. The city celebrated for its alternative scene is gentrifying, with vacancy rates shrinking and property prices and rents <a href="https://www.insidenetwork.com/the-berlin-real-estate-market-and-vacancy-rates/">increasing</a> (due more to the large tax incentives offered to companies to relocate to Germany’s capital than to any cultural activity). These trends place the scene <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/club-closure-berlin-dance-east-west-germany-gentrification">under pressure</a>.</p>
<p>Cultural entrepreneurs are responding by <a href="https://www.holzmarkt.com/">buying their venues</a>, often with institutional assistance, before the land becomes too expensive. Housing activists are <a href="https://righttobuildtoolkit.org.uk/case-studies/spreefeld-genossenschaft-berlin/#">building their own co-ops</a>, and artists are campaigning effectively for <a href="https://www.themayor.eu/fr/a/view/hamburg-s-alliance-for-housing-is-here-to-fix-the-housing-crisis-8257?trans=en-US">more social housing</a>, <a href="https://www.thelocal.de/20210907/housing-is-a-human-right-rent-activists-step-up-pressure-ahead-of-german-elections">rent caps and freezes</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-23/berlin-referendum-targets-city-s-corporate-landlords">renationalisation</a> of private housing companies.</p>
<p>Most of these initiatives are aided by considerable financial or government support, with cultural producers and entrepreneurs recognised and respected members of civil society. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-artists-and-cultural-industries-recover-from-the-covid-19-disaster-149815">How to help artists and cultural industries recover from the COVID-19 disaster</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What could Melbourne do?</h2>
<p>Melbourne’s large cultural scene has been fighting gentrification for decades. Organisations such as <a href="http://fairgo4livemusic.com/">Fair Go for Live Music</a>, <a href="https://www.bakehousestudios.com.au/slam">Save Live Australia’s Music</a> and most recently, <a href="https://www.saveourscene.com.au/">Save Our Scene</a> have clearly shown the threats from economic growth to local culture. Until very recently, government support has been sorely lacking. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1446974770634010630"}"></div></p>
<p>But in the current economic climate, with vacancy rates higher and property prices and rents lower than they have been for years in the inner-city and stricken CBD, a real opportunity exists to literally as well as metaphorically embed the scene in the city’s fabric. </p>
<p>Part of the $A100 million recovery fund should provide deposits and guarantees for artist and artist-collective purchases of inner-city property. That would take those places out of the market and secure a place for the arts for the long term. </p>
<p>The state government and council could broker secure, long-term leases for cultural producers, using influence and incentives to negotiate reasonable rentals that would give owners secure, long-term revenue streams. </p>
<p>They could help venues, performance spaces, galleries and cinemas to fully open up again. Permanent arts spaces could be secured in the <a href="https://www.nicholasbuilding.org.au/">Nicholas Building</a> – a hive of cultural production right on the doorstep of the Town Hall. </p>
<p>The Nicholas Building <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/12/the-only-place-like-it-in-the-world-why-the-nicholas-building-is-the-creative-heart-of-melbourne">is on the market</a>, and artists fear they may lose it to development. Could it, instead, enter into public or collective ownership? </p>
<p>The pandemic-induced slump will pass and Australia’s cities will come to life again. They are stable and secure places to invest. Students will return, vacancies will decline and commercial and residential rents will increase, irrespective of the health of arts and culture.</p>
<p>Now is the time to act. If Melbourne’s state and city governments do not take the chance now to value what we are lucky to still have, we may lose it forever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Shaw has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Gastwissenschaftsprogramm für Stadtforschung an der HCU (Fellows Program
for Urban Research at HafenCity University Hamburg) .</span></em></p>
City centres have been hit hard by lockdown measures - but can artists and entrepreneurs really breathe life into the space?
Kate Shaw, Honorary Senior Fellow, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149168
2021-03-07T19:06:21Z
2021-03-07T19:06:21Z
Electronic cities: between COVID and gentrification, dance music is struggling to find its groove again
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387916/original/file-20210305-13-1oca9su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4187%2C2797&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/energetic-deejay-standing-front-dancing-people-337411088">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a>Electronic music</a> is the <a href="https://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/ims-business-report-2020-analyses-the-impact-of-the-global-pandemic-on-the-electronic-music-sector/">fifth-most-popular music genre</a> globally. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the electronic music industry. Its <a href="https://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/ims-business-report-2020-analyses-the-impact-of-the-global-pandemic-on-the-electronic-music-sector/">estimated value</a> fell from US$7.3 billion in 2019 to US$3.3 billion in 2020.</p>
<p>Hundreds of electronic festivals around the world have been cancelled. Some events have gone <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55513167">underground</a>. In one case, more than 1,200 people were charged over an illegal rave party in Brittany that violated France’s <a href="https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/hundreds-charged-covid-violations-after-french-new-years-rave">COVID restrictions</a>.</p>
<p>Electronic dance music uses specific spaces in a city, so it’s heavily affected by both cultural and planning policies. Our new book, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789813347403">Electronic Cities</a>, studies these scenes. The contributors focus on 18 cities across the world as case studies in the development of electronic music. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.davehaslam.com/#/adventures-on-the-wheels-of-steel-the-rise-of-the-superstar-djs/">world of DJs</a> has been studied before, but not the impacts of city policies on such a global scale. The book shows electronic music is not well integrated in cultural policies and gets little support. <a href="https://www.sounddiplomacy.com/music-city-infographic">Music city policies</a> often do not include this music genre.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yCIMrKLji_M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Live venues are often not well protected by planning frameworks. This puts underground scenes that rely on small clubs at risk. </p>
<p>In Australia, we have seen some positive strategies, such as <a href="https://www.livetoolkit.com.au/guide/agent-of-change">Agent of Change</a> in Victoria, to protect inner-city live venues. Overall, though, electronic music is not well integrated in city policies. </p>
<h2>The rise of a global phenomenon</h2>
<p>Electronic music has grown from its origins in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Var%C3%A8se">composers</a>’ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te">experimentation</a> in the 1950s to encompass as many as 153 different <a href="https://music.ishkur.com/">genres</a>. These range from commercial dance music and film soundtracks to niche/underground electronic music. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WK977rQKHOo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The pulsating score of Midnight Express (1978) by Giorgio Moroder is a seminal piece of electronic music.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Broadly speaking, we can make a distinction between electronic dance music (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music">EDM</a>), also known as club music and made for dancing, and the more downtempo, conceptual intelligent dance music (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_dance_music">IDM</a>) made for listening at home. </p>
<p>Underground styles like acid techno are created by DJs, rather than musicians/producers, and are connected to specific clubs and audiences. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EJAtMIhnKkI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Acid techno emerged in London at underground clubs such as Club 414 in Brixton.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian dance music has been driven by an <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789813347403">attitude of DIY self-reliance</a>. Local producers such as Flume, Alison Wonderland, Will Sparks and Nervo have had international success.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FBBvgSgA1jg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Alison Wonderland exemplifies a new generation of artists who are moving away from the cliches of the rave culture.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All these different styles are sometimes grouped under the label of “<a href="https://highlark.com/edmc-the-expanding-of-social-understanding-and-acceptance-of-electronic-dance-music-culture/#:%7E:text=The%20Electronic%20Dance%20Music%20Culture,the%20participants%20within%20the%20culture.">electronic dance music culture</a>”. </p>
<h2>What role do cities have?</h2>
<p>The first hubs for electronic music were in the US (<a href="https://medium.com/@SupperMagazine/know-your-edm-history-chicago-house-and-detroit-techno-2e2ac15a5a9a">Chicago and Detroit</a>) and Germany (Dusseldorf and Berlin). Today, the culture has a global spread. Our book <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789813347403">Electronic Cities</a> analyses emerging electronic dance music cultures in places like <a href="https://www.thatsmags.com/shenzhen/post/26478/history-behind-shenzhens-blossoming-underground-electronic-scene">Shenzhen</a> in China, <a href="https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/raving-iran-documentary-teherans-techno-scene/">Tehran</a> in Iran and <a href="https://djmag.com/content/how-electronic-artists-are-reshaping-ghanian-music-scene">Accra in Ghana</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Poster for MUTEK Festival" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378741/original/file-20210114-14-1hy658m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The long-running MUTEK Montreal electronic music festival is integrated with the city’s cultural policies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Affiche_MUTEK_2011.png">MUTEKFestival/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cities have used the music as a tool for city branding, to promote international tourism and to develop nightlife economies. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11840650/movement-festival-detroit-demf-electronic-music-techno">Techno Week</a> in Detroit, for instance, is a major drawcard for the city. In Cluj-Napoca, Romania, the <a href="https://g.co/kgs/CbnnYJ">Untold EDM Festival</a> has been central to a strategy to attract tourists to this rural area. </p>
<p>Although some governments have embraced the industry, it has also suffered from official neglect. In large cities, small underground clubs, such as the former <a href="https://brixtonblog.com/2019/08/brixton-market-owners-buy-home-of-414-club/?cn-reloaded=1">Club 414</a> in <a href="https://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2020/08/gentrification-pop-brixton-the-battle-of-brixton-and-the-london-dream/#:%7E:text=In%20Brixton%2C%20house%20prices%20increased,a%20'global%20reserve%20currency'.">Brixton</a>, are constantly under threat from <a href="https://brixtonblog.com/2020/12/building-owners-cold-shoulder-creators-of-club-414/">redevelopment</a>. These clubs have unique historic and cultural value but are not well protected by planning regulations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366904/original/file-20201102-23-1s6nbm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Club 414 fell victim to the gentrification of Brixton in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Pommell (ex-Club 414 owner)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>Musician and record producer <a href="https://mfsberlin.com/mark-reeder">Mark Reeder</a> lives in Berlin, a world centre for clubbing. He has seen the disruptions caused by the pandemic unfold. In an interview for <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789813347403">Electronic Cities</a>, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the turning point that I thought would eventually happen. After 30 years of techno, it was on the brink. I believed something new was on the horizon. Obviously, I didn’t think it would be exactly like this.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul Curtis, the manager of Australian band <a href="https://www.regurgitator.net/">Regurgitator</a>, which straddles punk rock and electronica, had a similar vision:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’d already been thinking for the last bunch of years - how the hell do we continue to do what we do in a world that we have to change?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The band had been operating for some time as a kind of small-scale economy, with sustainability as a focus. The collapse of venues in the wake of COVID forced some of their plans to change, but they started to rethink options.</p>
<p>Curtis was puzzled by the attitude of some music business colleagues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were saying, ‘As soon as this is over, and we get back to normal’, and I’m thinking, well that’s just delusion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Curtis used the pandemic quiet to finish a <a href="http://lunapalace.com.au/special-events+3939+unit20-regurgitator-plays-unit-and-moreat-the-movies">live concert film</a> of the band. He has been distributing it through independent cinemas and music venues that have geared up for screenings. </p>
<p>Australia responded to the economic impacts of the pandemic by introducing the JobKeeper payment to help businesses retain staff. But many venues and most <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-artists-should-be-able-to-access-jobkeeper-payments-its-not-that-simple-138530">artists and arts workers were ineligible</a>. </p>
<p>Artists globally had similar experiences. In Helsinki, Finland, as <a href="https://giacomobotta.wordpress.com/">Giacomo Botta</a> explains in <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789813347403">Electronic Cities</a>, public support during the pandemic went only to recognised electronic dance music organisations. More marginal and underground communities, often most affected by the pandemic, were ignored. </p>
<p>On a more positive note, Sara Ross, speaking as part of a panel at <a href="https://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2021/theme">CTM Festival 2021</a>, explained that switching to online platforms such as <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/">Twitch</a> – usually used by gamers – might help Toronto DJs widen their audience. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tDhAn30t7NQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">At CTM Berlin, contributors to the Electronic Cities book talk about electronic music, urban policies and the pandemic.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reeder reflects on Berlin and what the future might look like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think this situation is having a profound effect on the way people consume contemporary music and especially what we perceived as the club scene.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He notes the desperation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/clubbing-at-home-how-live-streaming-made-dj-sets-more-inclusive-149931">DJs streaming from home</a>, and the emphasis on nostalgia – “sounds of the past becoming the sounds of the future”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Urban planning and cultural policies often neglect electronic dance music. Now the pandemic is forcing the EDM world to come up with new strategies to survive.
Sebastien Darchen, Senior Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland
Damien Charrieras, Associate Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
John Willsteed, Senior lecturer, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148906
2020-11-08T19:05:31Z
2020-11-08T19:05:31Z
Gail Jones: Australian literature is chronically underfunded — here’s how to help it flourish
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367660/original/file-20201105-19-14cltom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C14%2C963%2C732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kate Winslet in the 2015 film The Dressmaker. The film was based on the novel by Australian writer Rosalie Ham.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen Australia, Film Art Media, White Hot Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited version of author Gail Jones’ submission to the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Communications/Arts">parliamentary inquiry into the creative industries</a>.</em></p>
<p>Literary culture carries profound social value. In general terms it is essential to employment, cultural literacy and understanding of community, as well as to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery and growth. It is also radically underfunded and in urgent need of new support.</p>
<p>I am particularly concerned with the low level of investment in literature through state and federal funding agencies <a href="https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/about/annual-report-2018-19/">compared with other art forms</a>.</p>
<h2>The economic benefits</h2>
<p>Literature is a mainstay of the creative and cultural industries, which contributed $63.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2016-17. Creative arts <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/publications/creative-skills-future-economy">employ 645,000 Australians</a> and those numbers were increasing before the pandemic. Literature operates in the economy in many and complicated ways, since writers are “primary producers” of creative content.</p>
<p>Books form an often invisible bedrock of robust resources for the wider economy. They provide creative content in areas such as film, television, theatre and opera; moreover they contribute fundamentally to the educational sector, to libraries, events and what might be called our forms of cultural conversation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C998%2C612&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C998%2C612&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367425/original/file-20201104-15-13gs5zy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julia Ormond and Angourie Rice in Ladies in Black, a 2018 film based on the novel by Australian author Madeleine St John.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lumila Films, Ladies in Black SPV, Screen Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most conspicuous areas of economic benefit and employment are libraries, universities, schools, festivals, bookshops and publishing. </p>
<p>Indirect benefits, such as to tourism and cross-cultural understanding, are often overlooked in reference to the economic benefits of literature. Our books carry implicit, prestigious reference to a national culture and place; they attract interest, visitors and students and arguably establish a presence of ideas above and beyond more direct mechanisms of cultural exchange.</p>
<p>Cross-cultural exchange and understanding are crucial to the literary industries and of inestimable benefit in “recommending” Australia and its stories.</p>
<p>However, writers’ incomes are disastrously low, <a href="https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/122625541/3_Authors_Income.pdfl">$12,900 on average</a>; and COVID-19 has eliminated other forms of supplementary income. It has always been difficult to live as a writer in Australia (which is why most of us have “day jobs”) and it is clear writers are disproportionately disadvantaged. Although essential to the economic benefits of a healthy arts sector overall, writers are less supported by our institutions and infrastructure.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-to-boost-australian-writers-earnings-110694">Five ways to boost Australian writers’ earnings</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Total literature funding at the Australia Council has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/australian-books-may-wither-on-the-vine-authors-warn-20201027-p5690k.html">decreased by 44% over the past six years</a> from $9 million in 2013-14 to $5.1 million in 2018-19. The abolition of specific literature programs such as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/08/28/3835436.htm">Get Reading</a>, <a href="https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-releases/biggest-ever-books-alive-kicks-off/">Books Alive</a> and <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/departmental-news/book-council-australia">the Book Council</a> has been responsible for much of this decrease.</p>
<p>We need additional government-directed support such as the funding delivered to visual arts through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy ($6.6 million in 2018-19), regional touring delivered through Playing Australia ($7.4 million 2018-19) and the Major Festivals Initiative ($1.5 million 2018-19). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367417/original/file-20201104-21-1h6eg7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melbourne’s State Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Valeriu Campan/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Shaping national identity</h2>
<p>The literary culture in Australia is chronically underfunded, but its benefits are persistent, precious and immense. “Social well-being” requires social literacy, a sense of connection to one’s history, community and self: these are generated and nourished through narrative, conversation and reflection. </p>
<p>The literary arts create a sense of pride, community and solidarity. A single library in a country town can offer astonishing opportunities of learning and self-knowledge: how do we calculate value like this?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-library-humanist-ideal-social-glue-and-now-tourism-hotspot-116432">Friday essay: the library – humanist ideal, social glue and now, tourism hotspot</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As someone who grew up in remote and regional areas, I’m aware of how crucial libraries and book culture are to a sense of connection with the nation. Moreover, reading is an indicator of mental health, especially among young people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367421/original/file-20201104-13-1raf3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brothers Douglas and Dare Strout read a school book together while home schooling in Brisbane in April.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darren England/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“National identity” also requires reflexive literacy: social understanding and agency derive from reading and writing; a nation that neglects its literary culture risks losing the skills that contribute to creative thinking in other areas — including in industry and innovative manufacturing. Local reading and writing initiatives have had remarkable success in areas like Aboriginal literacy and aged care mental support.</p>
<p>More Australians are reading, writing and attending festival events than ever before. Reading is the second most popular way Australians engage with arts and culture. </p>
<p>Writers’ festivals are flourishing and attendances growing. Libraries remain crucial to our urban and regional communities. It is no overstatement to claim that literature has shaped and reflected our complex national identity.</p>
<h2>Australian literature at universities</h2>
<p>The formulation of a <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/departmental-news/meet-creative-economy-taskforce">Creative Economy Taskforce</a> by Arts Minister Paul Fletcher is a positive step in establishing better understanding of this crucial economy. I would draw attention, however, to the lack of literary expertise on the taskforce. The appointment of a publisher or a high-profile Indigenous writer, for example, would give more diversity to the collective voice of our literary community. </p>
<p>The additional appointment of an academic concerned with Australian literature, such as the current director of the <a href="https://www.asal.org.au/">Association for the Study of Australian Literature</a>, would further enhance the claims of literature.</p>
<p>The education sector will have a role in implementing creative arts initiatives. There has been a deplorable lack of support for Australian literature within the academy. </p>
<p>Under the current wish to renovate the jobs sector through the creative arts there is an opportunity to direct dedicated funds within the education budget to establishing a Chair of Australian Literature in each university (or at least in the Group of Eight).</p>
<p>There is currently one Chair at the <a href="https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/article/2020/july/new-chair-in-australian-literature-appointed">University of Western Australia</a> and a <a href="https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/australian-centre/people/boisbouvier-chair-in-australian-literature">privately endowed one</a> at the University of Melbourne. Postgraduate scholarships could also be offered specifically in the area of Australian literary studies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367410/original/file-20201104-19-16i1ut0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexis Wright, pictured here in 2007 after winning the Miles Franklin award, is the Boisbouvier Chair of Australian Literature at Melbourne University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For a comparatively small outlay in budget terms, such a move would signal direct support for Australian reading, writing and research and would be widely celebrated in the education and library sectors. </p>
<h2>‘Embarrassing’</h2>
<p>It is embarrassing to discover that some European universities (in my experience Belgium, Germany and Italy, in particular) study more Australian literature than is offered in our own nation. </p>
<p>The case for increased Australia Council funding in the neglected area of literature has already been made. Writers’ incomes are, as attested, direly low and I worry in particular about diminishing funding for new and emerging writers. </p>
<p>An injection of funds into the literature sector of the Australia Council is another efficient and speedy way in which to signal understanding of the fundamental role of literature to our cultural enterprises and economic growth. </p>
<p>Cuts to publishing, festivals, journals, individual writers’ grants and programs generally, have had a disastrous effect on the incomes and opportunities for writers in this nation. Notwithstanding a few highly publicised commercial successes, most writers truly struggle to make ends meet. The “trickle down effects” — from a sustaining grant, say, to a literary journal — have direct economic benefits to writers and therefore to the wider economy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/literary-magazines-are-often-the-first-place-new-authors-are-published-we-cant-lose-them-137900">Literary magazines are often the first place new authors are published. We can't lose them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most writers’ work is not recognised as a “job”; if it were, if there were a definition of “writer” as a category of honourable labour (such as it is, for example, in Germany and France), writers would be eligible for Jobmaker and Jobseeker benefits. </p>
<p>This may be blue-sky thinking, but I look forward to a future in which forms of precarious labour, like writing, are recognised and honoured as legitimate jobs.</p>
<p>Another area that may work well with literature is foreign aid. The government of Canada, for example, donates entire libraries of Canadian literature as part of its aid program. (I’ve seen one installed on the campus of the University of New Delhi.) </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367422/original/file-20201104-21-k9u32l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What about gifting libraries of Australian books as part of our aid program?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hamilton Churton/PR Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This works as a stimulus to the host economy (benefiting publishers and writers) and also the receiving community, for whom access to books and education may be difficult. It also encourages study of the host culture’s writings and has benevolent “soft power” effects of inestimable worth.</p>
<h2>‘Literature houses’</h2>
<p>The government has indicated physical infrastructure (buildings and so on) will be necessary to the renovation of the domestic economy post-COVID. This is a wonderful opportunity to consider funding “literature houses”, purpose-built sites for readings, writer accommodation for local and overseas residencies, places for book-launches, discussion and the general support of literature. </p>
<p>The Literaturhaus system in Germany, in which all major cities have <a href="https://www.visitberlin.de/en/literaturhaus-berlin">funded buildings for writer events</a>, and in which, crucially, writers are paid for readings and appearances, is a wonderful success and helps writers’ incomes enormously.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367424/original/file-20201104-23-1lxud2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Frankfurt Literaturhaus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The inclusion of Indigenous, regional, rural and community organisations in proposals for “literature houses” would stimulate local building economies and generate community recognition of Australian literature.</p>
<p>The Regional Australia Institute considers creative arts as a potentially productive area of regional economies. However <a href="http://www.regionalaustralia.org.au/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/RAI_SIP-2018-2-3-1_RegionalGrowthProspects_WEB_Final.pdf">its 2016 map of Australia has a tiny space allocated to creative industries</a> (situated around Alice Springs and linked to the Indigenous art industry). This strikes me as a radical imbalance and a missed opportunity.</p>
<p>A priority for this inquiry could be support for initiatives in literature, perhaps through existing library or schools infrastructure, to address creatively matters of both rural innovation and disadvantage. </p>
<p>Encouraging workshops in writing, including visiting writers, addressing reading and writing as a creative enterprise for the community as a whole: these could form the basis for an enlivening cultural participation and skills. Dedicated funds in literature for regional, remote and rural communities are urgently required.</p>
<p>Literature, in all its forms, is crucial to our nation — to the imaginations of our children, to the mental health and development of our adolescents, to the adult multicultural community more generally — in affirming identity, purpose and meaning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gail Jones works. at the University of Western Sydney. She has been a recipient in the. past of Australia Council funding for residency assistance. </span></em></p>
Literature funding has been cut brutally in recent years and writers’ incomes are disastrously low. Yet books shape our national identity, forming an often invisible bedrock for the wider economy.
Gail Jones, Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/135970
2020-05-19T14:29:47Z
2020-05-19T14:29:47Z
Cape Town’s creative firms are business innovators – but they’re vulnerable
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335756/original/file-20200518-83384-c3zmmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mural by famed Cape Town artist Faith47.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frédéric Soltan/Corbis/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1941 Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress, and George Antheil, an experimental composer, patented “frequency hopping”. The technique is still used today for secure radio communications, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F0-306-46999-5_11">Frequency hopping</a> employs a spectrum of frequency for radio communications that’s repeatedly changed according to an agreed sequence between sender and receiver. This secures a message against interception. Lamarr hoped the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hedy-lamarr-george-antheil-frequency-hopping-2014-7?IR=T">idea</a> would help in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-warfare">defence</a> of her adopted country, the US, in the second world war. </p>
<p>Antheil’s experience helped. He composed for multiple players, up to 16 pianos at a time, and had developed a mechanism to help keep them in sync. This also worked to enable frequency hopping technology. It’s one startling example of how combining the creative imagination with the world of technology can lead to new discoveries. </p>
<p>We wanted to find out more about South African firms that are fusing creative skills with digital technologies to produce new products and services. </p>
<p>In November 2019, the <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za">South African Cultural Observatory</a> partnered with a group of UK academics to <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/the-overlaps-between-the-digital-and-creative-sectors-innovation-and-technology-in-the-creative-economy">track</a> how these firms – graphic designers, film makers, music producers and the like – are using this fusion to drive growth.</p>
<p>There’s increasing interest in the <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/creative-industries-can-drive-economic-growth-job-creation-report">contribution</a> of the creative economy to growth and job creation in South Africa. But innovation research is still mostly focused on STEM sectors – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. </p>
<p>Our research examined the links and connections between digital technologies, innovation, intellectual property, and diversity in the cultural and creative industries. Our findings showed that there is an agile group of mostly small, highly innovative, firms that combine cultural and digital skills to meet market demand. </p>
<h2>Our study</h2>
<p>Cape Town was chosen for a pilot <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/the-overlaps-between-the-digital-and-creative-sectors-innovation-and-technology-in-the-creative-economy">study</a> because of its reputation as a creative city. The <a href="https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/cape-town">concept</a> refers to clusters of creative firms, but also includes events and skills. </p>
<p>A cluster of 349 cultural and creative firms operating in the Cape Town metro area were located and mapped. Through telephone interviews and an online survey 74 responses were received. The research design was partly based on a similar <a href="http://www.brightonfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/The-Brighton-Fuse-Final-Report.pdf">study</a> in the UK’s Brighton cluster, which allowed for interesting international comparisons. </p>
<p>South Africa does not have an officially recognised definition of the cultural and creative industries, but much research and policy makes use of UNESCO’s <a href="https://en.unesco.org/creativity/files/cultural-economy-unescos-framework-cultural-statistics">Framework for Cultural Statistics</a>. This includes more ‘traditional’ cultural sectors – like fine art, heritage, performing arts, music, film and book publishing – and also more commercial ones – like fashion, architecture, video games and advertising. </p>
<p>Forming the largest group responding to our survey were firms related to design (fashion design 19%; graphic design 14%; architecture 1%). This was followed by film, television, video and radio (12%); crafts (12%); music and performing arts (7%); and photography (7%). The sample also had representatives from advertising and marketing (12%); IT, software and computer services (4%); museums, galleries and libraries (3%). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The main hall of the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in the cultural city of Cape Town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>We found an agile business community</h2>
<p>There is strong evidence of a cluster of firms in Cape Town that are “fused” to combine digital technology with creative inputs to produce goods and services. </p>
<p>They exhibit high levels of innovation in business processes, goods and services, with 82% reporting involvement in some form of innovation over the last three years. Most common was process innovation (the way of running the business), which included things like digitisation (82%), big data usage (21%), and artificial intelligence (18%). Next most frequent were development of new products or services and/or the significant improvement of existing ones (72%), and marketing innovations (50%). Some form of formal research and development was engaged in by 45% of firms. </p>
<p>They’re an interdisciplinary cluster. An average of 51% of employees had a qualification in design; 42% in arts or humanities; 32% in commerce; and 20% had a STEM qualification. </p>
<p>More than a third of firms are start-ups, founded in the past five years. Most are small. The median number of employees was four, and 23% were owner operated with no employees. But they have the ability to draw on a wide range of external skills. A median of five freelancers were employed per firm in the previous financial year. The most commonly sourced skills were graphic, multimedia and web design and software development. Similar to what was found in Brighton, this business model allows them to be agile and productive in the volatile, project-based world of the creative economy.</p>
<p>Our results showed that, for at least some of these small firms, combining a range of skills crossing between the creative or cultural and digital sectors has resulted in faster growth rates than their bigger, older counterparts. </p>
<h2>But it’s a vulnerable time</h2>
<p>Yet it is this project-based way of working that makes many of these firms especially vulnerable during tough economic times. An <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/460/98b297950041a42470269d56260243a1/The+Employment+of+Youth+and+Women+in+Cultural+Occupations+in+South+Africa">analysis</a> of the Statistics South Africa Labour Force Survey, using the UNESCO definitions, showed that 50% of people in cultural occupations are employed informally, compared to 32% in other occupations. Freelancers make up 35% of cultural workers, compared to 10% of non-cultural workers. </p>
<p>The cultural and creative sector has also always had a vital, but seldom acknowledged, role to play in innovation. Despite this, only a minority of firms in our study used formal intellectual property protection, or earned revenue from intellectual property.</p>
<p>The exclusion of the cultural and creative sector from South Africa’s Draft White <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/white-paper-science-technology-and-innovation-draft-14-sep-2018-0000">Paper</a> on Science, Technology and Innovation (2018) may be a mistake. Similar papers by other countries, like the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/culture-white-paper">UK</a>, do acknowledge the link between culture, technology and innovation. </p>
<p>Similarly, cultural <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/white-papers">policy</a> could profitably include support for various kinds of innovations taking place in the cultural and creative industries, such as by these firms. </p>
<p>Especially in times of change and upheaval, the next marvellous idea may just come from those working at the interface between the creative and the technological.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research presented in this article is part of an international collaboration entitled "The roles of IP and diversity in the creative industries: Networking South Africa and the UK" which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). It was also supported by the South African Cultural Observatory, which is funded by the South African Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.</span></em></p>
There aren’t a lot of studies on South Africa’s cultural economy. A new one finds a cluster of creative firms in Cape Town with high levels of innovation.
Jen Snowball, Professor of Economics and Researcher at the South African Cultural Observatory, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137597
2020-05-06T19:51:40Z
2020-05-06T19:51:40Z
Museums are losing millions every week but they are already working hard to preserve coronavirus artefacts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332952/original/file-20200506-49573-1qv0lo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C8%2C5390%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Smithsonian Institute closed all of its museums due to the worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/washington-dc-usa-march-22-600w-1681956487.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has no borders and has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens from countries across the globe. But this outbreak is not just having an effect on the societies of today, it is also impacting our past.</p>
<p>Cultural resources and heritage assets – from sites and monuments, historic gardens and parks, museums and galleries, to the intangible lifeways of traditional culture bearers – require ongoing safeguarding and maintenance in an overstretched world increasingly prone to major crises. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the heritage sector is <a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/turning-threat-covid-19-opportunity-greater-support-documentary-heritage">already working hard</a> to preserve the COVID-19 moment, predicting that future generations will need documentary evidence, photographic archives and artefacts to help them understand this period of history.</p>
<h2>Closed to visitors</h2>
<p>The severity of the pandemic, and the infection control responses that followed, has caused great uncertainties and potential long-term knock-on effects within the sector, especially for smaller and medium-sized institutions and businesses. </p>
<p>A survey published by the <a href="https://www.ne-mo.org/news/article/nemo/nemo-publishes-results-of-survey-on-the-impact-of-the-corona-crisis-on-museums-in-europe.html">Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO)</a> and communications within organisations such as the International Committee for Archaeological Heritage Management (<a href="http://icahm.icomos.org/about-icahm/">ICAHM</a>) show that the majority of European museums are closed, incurring significant losses of income. By the beginning of April, 650 museums from 41 countries had responded to the NEMO survey, reporting 92% of them were closed. </p>
<p>Large museums such as the <a href="https://www.khm.at/en/">Kunsthistorisches Museum</a> in Vienna and the <a href="https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en">Rijksmuseum</a> and <a href="https://www.stedelijk.nl/en">Stedelijk Museum</a> in Amsterdam are losing €100,000-€600,000 (A$168,700-A$1,012,000) per week. Only about 70% of staff are currently being retained on average at most of the institutions. </p>
<p>Museums (both private and national) located in tourist areas have privately reported initial losses of 75-80% income based on the Heritage Sector Briefing to the UK government. Reports are also emerging of philanthropic income fall of 80-90% by heritage charities with many heading towards insolvency within weeks.</p>
<p>Cambodia’s Angkor Wat heritage site has <a href="https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50719371/angkor-wat-records-a-99-5-percent-drop-in-monthly-revenue/">lost 99.5% of its income in April</a> compared to the same time last year.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, restorations to the <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/feature/a-year-since-the-notre-dame-fire-the-cathedral-is-safe-but-big-decisions-need-to-be-taken-as-covid-19-halts-restoration">cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris</a> came to an abrupt halt due to coronavirus just prior to the first anniversary of the fierce fire that damaged it. Builders have since <a href="https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/04/27/builders-return-to-frances-famed-notre-dame-cathedral-in-paris/">returned</a> to the site. </p>
<p>The situation is especially dire for culture bearers within remote and isolated indigenous communities still reeling from other catastrophes, such as the disastrous fires in Australia and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-people-in-the-amazon-are-coping-with-the-coronavirus-pandemic-137041">Amazon</a>. Without means of social distancing these communities are at much higher risk of being infected and in turn their cultural custodianship affected. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-as-culture-moves-online-regional-organisations-need-help-bridging-the-digital-divide-135050">Coronavirus: as culture moves online, regional organisations need help bridging the digital divide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The right to culture</h2>
<p>It is interesting to think about how this crisis will reshape visitor experience in the future. </p>
<p>The NEMO survey reports that more than 60% of the museums have increased their online presence since they were closed due to social distancing measures, but only 13.4% have increased their budget for online activities. We have yet to see more data about online traffic in virtual museums and tours, but as it stands it is certainly showing signs of significant increase. </p>
<p>As highlighted in the preamble of the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17718&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">2003 UNESCO Declaration</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>cultural heritage is an important component of cultural identity and of social cohesion, so that its intentional destruction may have adverse consequences on human dignity and human rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The human right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage is guaranteed by international law, emphasised in the <a href="https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/33/20">Human Rights Council in its recent Resolution 33/20 (2016)</a> that notes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the destruction of or damage to cultural heritage may have a detrimental and irreversible impact on the enjoyment of cultural rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-heritage-is-a-human-right-99501">Protecting heritage is a human right</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the future, generations will need the means to understand how the coronavirus pandemic affected our world, just as they can now <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-isnt-the-first-global-pandemic-and-it-wont-be-the-last-heres-what-weve-learned-from-4-others-throughout-history-136231">reflect on the Spanish Flu or the Black Death</a>. </p>
<h2>Preserving a pandemic</h2>
<p>Work is underway to preserve this legacy with organisations such as <a href="http://webmail.historicenglandservices.org.uk/c/1duPFUrMKZmBI0WYG95V98Ooy">Historic England</a> collecting “lockdown moments in living memories” through sourcing photographs from the public for their archive. Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/Viral_Archive">@Viral_Archive</a> run by a number of academic archaeologists is following in a same vane with interesting theme of #ViralShadows.</p>
<p>In the United States, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-smithsonian-curators-are-rising-challenge-covid-19-180974638/">assembled a dedicated COVID-19 collection task force</a>. They are already collecting objects including personal protection equipment such as N95 and homemade cloth masks, empty boxes (to show scarcity), and patients’ illustrations.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/about/bridging-the-distance-pandemic-experiences">National Museum of Australia</a> has invited Australians to share their “experiences, stories, reflections and images of the COVID-19 pandemic” so curators can enhance the “national conversation about an event which is already a defining moment in our nation’s history”. The State Library of New South Wales is <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/nswathome">collecting images of life in isolation</a> to “help tell this story to future generations”.</p>
<p>Citizen science is a great way to engage public and although such work is labour-intensive it can lead to more online traffic and potentially fill in financial deficits by enticing visitors back to the sites.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332954/original/file-20200506-49556-3y7423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The closed Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands on March 22.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/amsterdam-netherlands-march-22-2020-600w-1679929069.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Priorities here</h2>
<p>The timing of the COVID-19 pandemic – occurring in the immediate aftermath of severe draught, catastrophic fire season and then floods, with inadequate intervening time for maintenance and conservation efforts – presents new challenges. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tourism.australia.com/en/markets-and-stats/tourism-statistics/the-economic-importance-of-tourism.html">The federal government reports </a> that in the financial year 2018-19, Australia generated A$60.8 billion in direct tourism gross domestic product (GDP). This represents a growth of 3.5% over the previous year – faster than the national GDP growth. Tourism <a href="https://www.tourism.australia.com/en/markets-and-stats/tourism-statistics/the-economic-importance-of-tourism.html">directly employed</a> 666,000 Australians making up 5% of Australia’s workforce. Museums and heritage sites are a significant pillar to tourism income and employment.</p>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/heritage">government assures us</a> “heritage is all the things that make up Australia’s identity – our spirit and ingenuity, our historic buildings, and our unique, living landscapes” its placement within the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment’s portfolio shows lack of prioritisation of the sector.</p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-3-in-4-australians-employed-in-the-creative-and-performing-arts-could-lose-their-jobs-136505">struggles we are already seeing in the arts and culture sector</a>, which has been recently moved to the portfolio of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications means that the future of our heritage (and our past) is far from certain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna M. Kotarba-Morley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The COVID-19 pandemic has closed museums and cultural sites worldwide. Meanwhile, curators are already working hard to preserve the current moment so that future generations may understand it.
Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Lecturer, Archaeology, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124160
2019-09-29T19:55:13Z
2019-09-29T19:55:13Z
Federal arts funding in Australia is falling, and local governments are picking up the slack
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293968/original/file-20190925-51425-qbs9mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C27%2C4590%2C3046&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new report says Australian cultural funding 'reached its highest point ever' in 2017/18 – but the full story is a lot more complicated.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian cultural sector has rarely lacked for innovation or creativity, but it has consistently failed to properly lobby for itself. Culture in Australia employs around 400,000 workers and represents <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/publications/cultural-and-creative-activity-australia-2008-09-2016-17">A$112 billion of economic activity</a>. But it has negligible political clout compared to industries like agriculture, mining or gambling.</p>
<p>Enter The New Approach, a newish think-tank in Canberra with lofty goals of improving the public perception of Australian culture. </p>
<p>A New Approach is <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au/new-approach/faqs/">funded by wealthy philanthropists</a> from the Myer, Fairfax and Keir families, and <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au/new-approach/faqs/">managed by the Australian Academy of the Humanities</a>. After an initial burst of publicity, it has spent several years getting itself set up, appointing a director, and generally getting its act together.</p>
<p>So it’s fair to say its very <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au/new-approach/report1/">first report</a> was awaited by Australia’s arts community with some interest. Australian culture could do with a pep up just now. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-approach-to-culture-82448">A new approach to culture</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The election of the Morrison government was a huge disappointment for many in the sector. While Bill Shorten and Labor put forward a proper arts policy with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/17/voting-for-culture-this-election-heres-how-the-parties-arts-policies-stack-up">more than A$300 million in funding promises</a>, the Coalition didn’t bother with a cultural policy at all (although some small promises were made to the music industry).</p>
<p>The New Approach’s first report is a topic of perennial interest to the cultural sector: government funding. The report collates available public data on cultural funding across the three levels of government, giving us an overall picture in an easily digestible form for the first time.</p>
<h2>A high point for funding?</h2>
<p>The report’s number one finding will surprise many: cultural funding “reached its highest point ever” in 2017-18. The big picture findings show that cultural funding has been increasing in recent years. All up, across federal, state, territory and local governments, cultural spending by governments was A$6.86 billion last fiscal year, up from A$6.31 billion in 2007-08.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293970/original/file-20190925-51457-wcg147.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total combined cultural funding by all levels of government (adjusted to June 2018 wage price index and non-adjusted) 2007–08 to 2017–18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A New Approach</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a hole in the time series throughout the report, with data for several years after 2013 missing. That’s because Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey cut funding to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2014. The ABS then had to discontinue the data collection. </p>
<p>Rather diplomatically, A New Approach’s Kate Fielding told The Conversation this was “very disappointing.” </p>
<p>While funding is up overall, in per capita terms the picture is less rosy: funding per person has been trending down for a decade, from $289 per person in 2007-08 to $275 last year – a 4.9% fall in 11 years.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293969/original/file-20190925-51463-1mrse7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cultural funding per capita (adjusted to June 2018 WPI) for all levels of government combined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A New Approach</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Actually, that “highest ever” line is a bit misleading. The report has adjusted figures to 2018 dollars, by indexing them to the wage price index. But <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/WageSlowdown">wages have been growing very slowly</a> in Australia over the past decade. By the more conventional inflation measure of the consumer price index, cultural funding is well down on 2007-08 figures.</p>
<p>Decomposing the figures across the three levels of government shows why. The Commonwealth has embarked on a swingeing austerity drive in cultural spending, particularly since the Coalition was elected in 2013.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294678/original/file-20190929-185415-1ei37xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A New Approach</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As anyone in the arts sector could tell you, the past six years have been a <a href="http://www.realtimearts.net/article/134/12368">bumpy ride</a>. The report refers to the “volatility” of funding, and that’s evident from the data series. </p>
<p>Cultural funding fell dramatically in the Abbott years, but has risen by around 11% since. And the culprit does appear to be the federal government: according to The New Approach, Commonwealth funding has fallen by 19% per person since 2007-08. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293964/original/file-20190925-51425-euk2yj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cultural funding per capita by different levels of government (adjusted to June 2018 wage price index), 2007–08 to 2017–18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A New Approach</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is some good news. Local government in particular has picked up its game, increasing funding per capita by 11% since 2007-08. </p>
<h2>A stark story</h2>
<p>“The most interesting element is that local governments are clearly playing a bigger role in public support for arts and culture,” Fielding wrote in an email. </p>
<p>“Across the 11 years reviewed, the balance shifts from the federal government being a major supporter to a far more even split between the three levels of government,” she wrote.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-support-for-arts-funding-declining-australia-must-get-better-at-valuing-culture-95057">With support for arts funding declining, Australia must get better at valuing culture</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Fielding is also concerned about falling per capita funding. </p>
<p>“As with other areas of government expenditure that don’t keep up with population growth, we risk a decline in the relevance and accessibility of cultural opportunities for people right across the country.” She argues there is a “pressing need” for more cooperation between the three levels of government. </p>
<p>There’s been a fair degree of skepticism in the cultural sector about The New Approach, and whether it will deliver anything tangible. This new report should start to allay some of those concerns. Pulling together the available statistics on public funding of culture in this country is a worthy task. The picture, now painted, tells a stark story.</p>
<p>Australia’s artists and cultural leaders now have a very simple question they can put to Scott Morrison’s new arts minister, Paul Fletcher: when will the austerity end?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Eltham has previously received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, a cultural funding agency of the federal government. In April 2019 he worked with industry body the National Association for the Visual Arts to help produce an event, 'Australian cultural policy: The next decade', that canvassed federal cultural funding issues. He is a member of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance, a union that represents cultural workers. </span></em></p>
A new report by the cultural think tank A New Approach establishes some useful baselines for Australia’s cultural debate.
Ben Eltham, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116444
2019-05-09T12:53:29Z
2019-05-09T12:53:29Z
Movies are as popular as ever, but rising ticket prices may be shutting many people out of the cinema
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273570/original/file-20190509-183077-jg9jw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C989%2C4019%2C2028&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans queue to see Avengers: Endgame in Bangkok.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCCCi12 via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK cinema association announced late in 2018 that movie admissions were <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/cinema-attendance-is-highest-since-the-1970s-11581982">on course to hit 176m for the year</a>, 6m more than in 2017 and the highest since the 1970s when blockbusters such as Star Wars and Jaws had people queuing round the block. This in an era of streaming, online sharing platforms and on-demand, on-the-go access to virtually any film, anywhere. </p>
<p>Against increasingly tougher odds, cinema-going remains the most popular form of cultural participation and public social engagement – and it is the same story pretty much wherever you look around the world.</p>
<p>Behind this success story, though, lies a serious threat. Despite billions of tickets sold every year worldwide and box office revenue steadily increasing since the 1970s (<a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/box-office-record-disney-dominates-1203098075/">reaching over US$40 billion in 2018</a>) these numbers mask a gradual narrowing of the socioeconomic spectrum of cinema-going audiences.</p>
<p>If the trend of increasing ticket prices and the business models that underpin this increase continue, this staple form of public participation and communal engagement will lose its social function. Rising ticket prices will effectively exclude many of those for whom cinema was intended in the first place, resulting in its complete gentrification.</p>
<h2>Rising prices</h2>
<p>As part of my research, I calculated the relative cost of movie tickets over the years and compared that with wages. It paints a bleak picture. Adjusted for inflation to give a contemporary perspective, attending a movie theatre in 1938 in the US (the year the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Fair-Labor-Standards-Act">Fair Labor Standards Act</a> established the federal minimum hourly wage) cost the equivalent of US$4.14 (calculated by adjusting the <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm">original ticket price</a> to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm">January 2019 prices</a>. </p>
<p>That meant that for every hour worked at minimum wage – then set at US$5.39 – film-goers would invest roughly 75% of one hour’s work. In 2018, going to the cinema cost US$9.11 – so a minimum wage worker would need to invest 125% of their hourly wage to buy a cinema ticket. US minimum hourly wage has been stuck at US$7.25 since 2009.</p>
<p>In the UK, the situation is only marginally better. Cinema prices <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/features/are-uk-cinema-ticket-prices-sustainable/5109989.article">average £7.22</a> (US$9.40) against a minimum wage set at £7.83 (US$10.20) for over-25s – but dropping rapidly for those below that age to as low as £5.90 (US$7.70) for 18- to 20-year-olds.</p>
<p>Why does this matter? At a time when few places offer everyone in society the opportunity to access a shared human experience – to laugh and cry at the same things in the same shared space – it is of paramount importance that cinema remains affordable to all.</p>
<h2>Social significance</h2>
<p>It is not a matter of cultural significance but of social significance. When Steven Spielberg <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/18/18229794/steven-spielberg-streaming-theatrical-films-netflix-roma">says that</a> “there’s nothing like going to a big dark theatre with people you’ve never met before and having the experience wash over you”, he’s not making an argument about the superior artistic stature of cinema – to prioritise one art form over another is absurd. </p>
<p>Filmmakers like Spielberg remind us that going to the cinema has, over the course of the past century, become a right of everybody to participate in the cultural life of the nation.</p>
<p>Historically, cinema achieved this crucial role as a cultural and social meeting-point by being affordable to all – ensuring that the most diverse cross-section of the population could afford to go to the cinema regularly. In this sense, it is fundamentally different to television or video games, because going to the cinema is a cultural practice that requires <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/what-is-a-movie-netflix-streaming-hollywood-oscars?">a social contract between the audience, the exhibitors and the filmmakers</a> – where you agree to leave the house, sit in a dark theatre and share the film experience with people you don’t know.</p>
<p>This may sound strange, but seeing a movie and going to the cinema are two different things. Going to the cinema requires a level of commitment that is fundamentally different to choosing to sit down and watch television or play with a games console at home.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273561/original/file-20190509-183109-xg4qw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">London 1941: people queue to see The Philadelphia Story and Gone With the Wind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not about the artistic quality of the medium – but of democratic participation and the consequences of increasing levels of division in society. At its core, film is proven to have a shared emotional, artistic experience – not just with friends, but with strangers and, crucially, in a public space which, at least for those two hours, belongs to everyone.</p>
<h2>For the many</h2>
<p>While there is no easy fix to this issue, sliding price scales based on income and other related factors, to name one particularly intriguing way of rethinking prices that has already proved to be successful <a href="http://www.sqiff.org/news/sliding-scale-tickets-report/">where trialled</a>, may provide a useful starting point for the conversation.</p>
<p>This is a tale with no obvious villain – cinema owners invest huge amounts of money every year in upgrades while studios spend many millions making the movies they believe people want to see. For this story to have a happy ending it is therefore crucial to ensure that the conversation does not get stuck in the kind of simplifications (film versus Netflix, distributors versus audiences) that may make for good headlines but mask the real risks we all run if cinema should become a pastime for the few.</p>
<p>So ensuring access to the cinema experience for everyone should be part of the political and social conversation – not just an issue of preference. Streaming is not the enemy in this picture, but allowing significant cross-sections of the cinema-going population to be cut off from the most popular form of cultural engagement, most definitely is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gianluca Sergi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Cinema is the most popular firm of cultural participation, but rising ticket prices threaten that.
Gianluca Sergi, Director, Institute for Screen Industries Research and Associate Professor of Film and Television, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114434
2019-04-10T04:50:22Z
2019-04-10T04:50:22Z
Arts and culture under the Coalition: a lurch between aggression and apathy
<p>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/coalition-record-2019-69102">series</a> examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.</p>
<hr>
<p>What happens when an opposition party wins power? In theory, it adopts a more statesmanlike demeanour. If it doesn’t, it stays perennially narky, unwilling to accept others’ ideas, yet incapable of generating a positive way forward itself. </p>
<p>The alternate aggression and apathy of the Coalition in arts and culture since the 2013 election suggests it never abandoned its oppositional ways. Taking office just after <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2013/April/Creative_Australia__National_Cultural_Policy_2013">Creative Australia</a>, the national cultural policy Labor released too late to have much practical effect, the way was clear to reclaim the portfolio as one of bipartisan concern.</p>
<p>This had happened under Prime Minister John Howard, who responded to the game-changing influence of Paul Keating’s <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/29704">Creative Nation</a> policy not by rejecting it, but by extruding its ambitions through traditional Menzies values. </p>
<p>Instead, the last six years has seen a combination of ministerial whim and purposeless economising. There has been an absence of strong policy initiatives, neglect of smaller arts organisations, and an undermining of trust in arm’s length agencies, notably the Australia Council for the Arts and the ABC.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-governments-have-a-long-history-of-trying-to-manipulate-the-abc-and-its-unlikely-to-stop-now-110712">Australian governments have a long history of trying to manipulate the ABC – and it's unlikely to stop now</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The first Coalition arts minister, George Brandis, was an artistic conservative with a poor grasp of the sector’s industrial complexities. Mitch Fifield, the current minister, is an economic conservative with little time for its cultural complexities. The emergence of tech giants like Netflix and Amazon has changed the landscape of the arts, introducing a proliferation of new competitors for Australian creators – but the government has failed to keep up with these developments.</p>
<p>There has also been a resurgent populist politics with a nasty, xenophobic edge to it. As a mechanism for social inclusion, arts and culture appear to have passed the Coalition by entirely.</p>
<h2>A space where nothing happens</h2>
<p>All the government’s major cultural policy events have been regrettable ones: the spat over the 2014 Sydney Biennale, which saw Brandis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/george-brandis-threatens-sydney-biennale-transfield-blackballing">threaten artists if they <em>didn’t</em> accept corporate sponsorship</a>; the 2015 raid on the Australia Council’s budget to establish an ill-defined <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/budget-2015-national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts-established/news-story/b460206e1744de45f93fba6c0846e50c">National Programme for Excellence in the Arts</a> (NPEA); and a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/legal_and_constitutional_affairs/arts_funding">Senate Inquiry into the arts cuts</a> with an unprecedented 1,719 submissions.</p>
<p>Then, with the accession of Fifield as minister, the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/rebranding-npea-to-catalyst-the-same-program-by-another-name-20151120-gl3oqr.html">rebranding of the NPEA as the Catalyst Fund</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-catalyst-arts-funding-mess-many-questions-remain-74848">dissolution of this body too</a>, and the return to the Australia Council of most (but not all) of the money taken from it 18 months previously.</p>
<p>Since 2016 arts and culture has been a space where nothing happens, by design. The low rate of government investment in the sector has continued unabated. In 2011-12, total federal cultural expenditure was <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4172.0main+features82014">A$2.355 billion; in 2012-13 A$2.361 billion</a>; <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1761/f/cultural-funding-by-government-data-2015-16.pdf">in 2015-16 A$2.29 billion</a>; and <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1761/f/cultural-funding-by-government-australia-2016-17-data.pdf">in 2016-17 it was A$2.384 billion</a>.</p>
<p>Figures for 2014-15 are hard to find, because in 2014 the Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/products/745695D9AEBEFE64CA257CEE0004715C?OpenDocument">canned its Culture, Sport and Recreation accounts</a> in response to funding cuts. The burden of collecting cultural data then fell on the <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/documents/meeting-cultural-ministers-statistical-advisory-group-and-statistics-working-group-history">Meeting of Cultural Ministers Statistical Advisory Group</a> – which had its federal administrative support removed in 2012.</p>
<p>Against this, the Coalition can point to recent investment in cultural infrastructure through the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Quick_Guides/Publicservice">Public Service Modernisation Fund</a>, and a <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/departmental-news/budget-2017-18-arts">A$8.2 million tip-in</a> for collecting institutions. The <a href="https://www.ausleisure.com.au/news/federal-government-commits-63.8-million-to-canberras-national-gallery-of-australia/">National Gallery of Australia has received A$63.8 million</a> to ensure, in the words of one arts bureaucrat, “the new Director doesn’t have a leaky roof and can buy the next Blue Poles”. Given the <a href="https://www.finance.gov.au/resource-management/pgpa-glossary/efficiency-dividend/">Efficiency Dividends</a> scalped from galleries and museums in the past, however, this counts as little more than one step forward after two steps back.</p>
<p>The 2019 Coalition budget extends the ad hocism, with A$30.9 million for an <a href="https://www.minister.communications.gov.au/minister/mitch-fifield/news/more-live-music-more-opportunities-australias-musicians">Australian Music Industry Package</a>, and sprinkled support for select cultural bodies, including the <a href="https://bundanon.com.au">Bundanon Trust</a>, the property Arthur Boyd bequeathed to the nation (that just happens to be in the Liberals’ <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/for-whom-a-bellwether-tolls/">most marginal NSW seat</a>).</p>
<p>There is no return of money to the Australia Council or the Regional Arts Fund. In the words of Artshub’s Richard Watts the budget “<a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/what-the-arts-got-from-budget-2019-257671">demonstrates the Morrison government’s lack of interest and understanding of the sector</a>”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/missing-in-action-a-vision-for-the-arts-in-the-2019-budget-114816">Missing in action: a vision for the arts in the 2019 budget</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most serious of all has been the damage done to the reputation and operation of the Australia Council and the ABC. Intentionally or not, both were harmed under the Coalition. Given their crucial role as protectors of our national culture, the consequences go beyond the immediate storms in which they were embroiled.</p>
<h2>Labor’s challenge</h2>
<p>The main challenge facing an incoming Labor government is recognised in its pre-election manifesto <a href="https://www.alp.org.au/media/1539/2018_alp_national_platform_constitution.pdf">A Fair Go for Australia</a>: which parts of creative Australia remain applicable and which need upgrading? The arts and culture section juggles two sets of priorities. On the one hand, there is standard blah about “contribut[ing] to innovation and lift[ing] productivity”. On the other, there is new awareness of the urgent need to promote cultural diversity and connection in an age of democracy deficit. </p>
<p>These pronouncements are of the broader kind. Yet there are two specifics Labor might consider. First, ending efficiency dividends for arts and culture, which are not efficient and a dividend only if the public goods so targeted are not impaired. </p>
<p>Second, restoring federal support for the Statistical Advisory Group and the ABS’s Culture, Sport and Recreation accounts. I have been an <a href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/wm-9781925523805.html">outspoken critic of the datafication of cultural policy</a>, but fit-for-purpose facts and figures are essential to meaningful evaluation. </p>
<p>Both resources are important for ensuring our next national cultural policy is truly cultural, national and bipartisan.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Coalition government’s approach to arts and culture policy has been one of ad hocism and neglect. Perhaps most serious has been the damage done to the Australia Council and the ABC.
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101459
2018-08-21T04:24:54Z
2018-08-21T04:24:54Z
Beyond bulldust, benchmarks and numbers: what matters in Australian culture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232610/original/file-20180820-30584-9wbv43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists queue to take a photograph of the Mona Lisa at The Louvre.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.image-perception.com/">© NikkiJohnson, Image Perception</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited extract from the new book What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture. It is a longer read, at just under 2500 words.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice … To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. - Bertrand Russell</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When did culture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs, films, games, art installations, clothes, and all the myriad objects that fill our lives and which we consider cultural, become a matter of statistical measurement? </p>
<p>When did the value of culture become solely a matter of the quantifiable benefits it provides, and the latter become subject to input–output analysis in what government budgets refer to as “the cultural function”? When did experience become data?</p>
<p>Perhaps a more important question is why did it happen, and why does it keep happening? Also, how does it happen? Culture is innate to being human. Thick books have been written describing culture’s myriad expressions and meanings. Culture has been around for as long as humanity itself. And the question of its value is not new.</p>
<p>But why are we answering it in the way that we are – by turning it into something to be scaled, measured and benchmarked? Who loses and who gains?</p>
<p>These are big questions of more than academic or Australian import. They are, indeed, much broader than arts and culture, as a recent crop of studies describing the unintended effects of the rise of “metric power” suggests.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232612/original/file-20180820-30602-4yz1q3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How can data help assess the merit of a book?</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our core contention is that datafied modes of analysis are claiming authority over domains of human existence they have limited capacity for understanding. If you are researching an influenza epidemic, more data is better data.</p>
<p>If you are studying Australian film, more data is informative but not definitive because questions of artistic merit can only be judged. If you are assessing Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, massified data is close to useless.</p>
<p>At a time when even accountants are looking for a more compelling understanding of value, it is imperative that the arts – a domain where individual experience is central – resist the evangelical call of quantification and winnow its potential benefits from its real and deleterious risks.</p>
<h2>Alienating language</h2>
<p><a href="https://shop.monash.edu/what-matters-talking-value-in-australian-culture.html">What Matters?</a> hopes to influence public debate about the value of culture, to encourage people to see their cultural experiences in that debate, and not feel some strange urge to speak the “language of government”. This can be extremely alienating. </p>
<p>Consider a 2008 Australian Bureau of Statistics paper, Towards Comparable Statistics for Cultural Heritage Organisations. It proposes “a list of Key Measures … balancing the priority of items across four
cultural heritage domains with the feasibility of producing standard guidelines for collecting data”. The five Key Measures it puts forward – Attendance, Visitor Characteristics, Financial Resources, Human Resources and The Collection – subsume 18 Detailed Measures, with a list of Counting Rules for each.</p>
<p>This is a long way from browsing a library shelf, or walking through an exhibition. A long way from reading a book, contemplating the mystery of ancient artefacts, or librarians helping people navigate online genealogy portals. </p>
<p>Such language generates a detached world of arithmetical marks, and the sums and inferences considered legitimate to those marks. Where does the <em>experience</em> of going to a library or museum fit in? Not in ABS statistics, obviously, and no doubt the bureau would not think itself competent to pronounce on such “qualitative” matters. Who does then? And how do “qualitative” matters sit with quantitative
enumeration?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232614/original/file-20180820-30605-12r74uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Where does the experience of visiting a museum fit in? A visitor at the ‘Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters’ exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in February.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Cooch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A petri dish</h2>
<p>The datafication of arts and culture is only a few decades old, so it is not an essential or inevitable element of their assessment. What happens when this is the major way we describe their place in our lives? In 2013, we began a university research project of moderate scope seeking to understand how quantitative and qualitative indicators align in government measures of culture. As we were in Adelaide, we made that city our focus. We called the project Laboratory Adelaide because we saw it as a case study with a rich cultural history and an active contemporary arts scene: a petri dish of just the right scale.</p>
<p>To get our research off the ground, we held a lunch for some of Adelaide’s cultural leaders. Over dessert, we asked them what they wanted us to achieve. The answer was instructive: a way to talk truthfully about what they do. They were, they said, unable to incorporate their real motivations and experiences into their reporting. Could we find a new, better way of communicating the actual value of arts and culture?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232616/original/file-20180820-30581-1j14079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Visitors at ‘the obliteration room’, an artwork by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, at GOMA in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dave Hunt/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the first year this seemed a simple enough goal. After all, these people were doing things the public had ready access to. Both state and local government in South Australia had a record of acknowledging the contribution of culture. They supported a range of cultural organisations and events – especially festivals, which are a big part of Adelaide’s civic life. </p>
<p>There was a sense that everyone already knew how important culture was to the state. But when it came to demonstrating its value, the words weren’t there. Our job was to fix that. As humanities scholars, we felt we were in a good position to do so. After all, didn’t we spend our lives talking about culture?</p>
<p>As the second year drew on, a note of uncertainty entered the project. By now we were starting to publish, and articulate in a series of articles, columns, notes, letters and emails, the dimensions of the problem as we saw it – the short time-scales governments deploy to evaluate outcomes, for example, which ignore culture’s longer-term contribution. Or the woolly use of language in policy documents, that makes the precise meaning of terms like “excellence” and “innovation” impossible to pin down.</p>
<p>These issues, and others, have serious assessment implications. But it goes beyond this, highlighting a basic misapprehension of culture by governments, not on a human level – politicians and policy makers, like the rest of us, read books, watch films and listen to music – but on the official level. </p>
<h2>Did the data deliver?</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, political events intervened and the Australian cultural sector exploded like a supernova. In 2015, the then federal Arts Minister, George Brandis, raided the budget of the federal arts agency, the Australia Council of the Arts, to set up his own, personally administered grant body. To say this came as a shock to arts practitioners would be a considerable understatement. The minister’s actions contradicted 30 years of cross-party consensus about how culture in Australia should be federally funded – via independent agencies – and rendered his support of the Council’s 2014–19 Strategic Plan a sham. The sector went into uproar. Where did the years of accumulated data on the demonstrable benefits of arts and culture figure in this fiery clash of ideologies?</p>
<p>The answer is that they didn’t. The numerical proofs of culture’s value (mainly economic value) that have been cascading through government consciousness since the 1970s were nowhere to be seen. For Laboratory Adelaide it confirmed a growing conviction: the problem of the value of culture is not a methodological one. It cannot be addressed by a new metric. Use of measurement indicators assumes a degree of background understanding that too often isn’t there at a policy level. The quantitative demonstrations of value we were trying to improve don’t make sense for culture. They flatten out its history, purpose and meaning.</p>
<p>This realisation put us at odds with expert views about the role of culture in post-industrial societies today. These views are typically upbeat about culture’s economic and urban “vibrancy”. Charles Landry’s “creative cities”, Richard Florida’s “creative class”, John Hartley and Terry Flew’s “creative industries” – the ideas of these authors, and others of similar ilk, are practical and positive (though Florida has recently retreated to a gloomier position).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232617/original/file-20180820-30605-1rnowxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The problem of the value of culture is not a methodological one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeremy Ng/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “creative industries” approach, for example, treats policy-making processes with a benign eye and admits no serious difficulties when it comes to proving the benefits culture provides. This chipper outlook is mirrored by swarms of local efforts around Australia today to develop bespoke systems of “cultural indicators”, each slightly different, yet each beholden to the same underlying assumption: that the value of culture can be numerically demonstrated.</p>
<p>By now we were participating in conferences, and consulting broadly among arts agencies and peak bodies. It sometimes seemed to us that everyone was looking for the perfect metric. We sat through presentation after presentation on quantitative approaches to culture’s value. At the end, hands would invariably go up and people say they were developing a “similar measurement model”.</p>
<p>Yet underneath the relentless optimism, we sensed a current of troubled preoccupation. It went by different names: “the intrinsic value of culture”, “the inherent value of culture”, “(the) cultural value (of culture)”. In this dry form it seems just another dimension of culture’s value, to be arraigned alongside the others: its economic value, its social value, its heritage value, etc. It is not. </p>
<p>It is code for all that is left <em>out</em> of measurement indices, which is to say our whole <em>sense</em> of culture, of what culture <em>means.</em> It seems obvious to say it, but in culture No Meaning = No Value. It may not be true of boots, bread and billiard balls. But it is absolutely true of symbolic goods like paintings, performances and books.</p>
<p>For thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years, culture has been supported through patronage. Whether it came from kings, popes or rich merchants, it came the same way: by someone seeing a particular cultural thing or activity and personally choosing to fund it. We have replaced this simple, if limited, support mechanism with distanced assessment processes of Heath-Robinson complexity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232611/original/file-20180820-30593-pdcwy5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Heath Robinson: Cork Mat Method of Crossing Streams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These processes – involving submission forms, acquittal procedures, classification systems, priority lists – lose the immediacy of cultural experience. They are generalised and abstract, with cultural experience framed as a matter of personal taste, and opinions in relation to it “subjective”. Numbers then present as “objective”, whether or not they reflect the core elements of culture. Hence the desire to quantify as much of its assessment as possible.</p>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>But like mirages of water on a hot road, the pursuit of numbers begets only the pursuit of more numbers. You might count, for example, the number of people going to a music concert (a measure of frequency). But did they have a good time (the value proposition)? </p>
<p>You might question some of them, and rank their answers (on a preference scale of one to five). But were they being truthful (response bias)? You might look for changes in their market choices thereafter (acquisition of consumption skills). But what of less obvious effects – on wellbeing, level of education, social participation, civic cohesion? More indices, more numbers. The search for certainty produces ever-more uncertain measures, each a further step away from the actual experience of culture. As the numbers get more rubbery and elaborate, people’s trust in them diminishes.</p>
<p>And it’s expensive. The statistical habit, like any habit, is one that requires significant investment. Is there a cost-benefit analysis to be done on our obsession with cost-benefit analysis? At what point do we stop trying to measure something and try to understand it better?</p>
<p>And it doesn’t help. The ever more elaborate datafication of culture hasn’t secured more money for arts and culture in Australia, or distributed the extant money better. If it assists an organisation to obtain an increase in public support in one grant round, there is no guarantee it will continue in the next.</p>
<p>This was the problem of culture’s value as it appeared to us in our third year, when we saw the full extent of what we had stumbled into. Beneath the inexorable pursuit of numbers-driven data lay a Dante-esque vortex of hope, despair, panic and bewilderment masked by the neutral patois of quantitative analysis – the bullshit language that Adelaide’s cultural leaders resented so deeply.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232789/original/file-20180821-30587-e6l53b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Anton Koch: fresco of Dante’s inferno.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So where to from here? It is a question with profound implications, and not one Laboratory Adelaide can answer conclusively. However, we have identified some of the difficulties in valuing culture that governments and the public must meet head-on. They are not the only problems, but they are important ones:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The fact that assessment processes claim to measure value but leave out the human experience of culture, and turn it into a set of abstract, categorical traits.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that assessment processes are preoccupied with short-term effects, ignore the longer-term trajectories of cultural projects, and have a sense of history that is flat and inorganic.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that assessment processes use language and phrases empty of specific meaning for culture (i.e. bullshit), or valorise words that have no universally agreed definition (e.g. excellence or innovation).</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that people who experience culture are treated as consumers in a marketplace rather than members of a public, so public value (the underlying purpose of public investment) is inadequately addressed.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that cultural organisations are regarded as scaled-up delivery mechanisms for policy outcomes, rather than as a serious and nuanced ecology worthy of study and support.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that too often the value of culture is reduced to a dollar value, directly or indirectly.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Objectors might say that culture <em>is</em> considered in assessment processes, by way of peer review and ministerial oversight. They are right to some extent – but it is a declining extent. </p>
<p>Peer assessors and politicians retain an important role in how culture is evaluated in Australia today, both before and after it attracts government funding. But compared to the huge social outlay in gathering statistics and developing metrics, our almost religious faith in quantitative measurement, the place of judgement in valuing culture is a reluctant admission, an ageing relative inclined to embarrassing assertions, to be kept on a tight statistical leash. The human dimension of the problem of value is presumed to take care of itself. Only when it goes wrong, as it did under Senator Brandis, does it become a matter of strong attention. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture by Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett <a href="https://shop.monash.edu/what-matters-talking-value-in-australian-culture.html">is published by Monash University Publishing</a> and launched today.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick is a Chief Investigator for the ARC project Laboratory Adelaide: the Value of Culture. He is a co-author of What Matters?</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian receives funding from the ARC for Laboratory Adelaide: the Value of Culture. He is a co-author of What Matters?. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tully Barnett receives funding from the ARC for Laboratory Adelaide: the Value of Culture. She is a co-author of What Matters?</span></em></p>
At a time when even accountants are looking for a more compelling understanding of value, it is imperative that the arts – where individual experience is central – resist the evangelical call of quantification.
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University
Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University
Tully Barnett, Research Fellow, School of Humanities, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98695
2018-06-28T03:04:57Z
2018-06-28T03:04:57Z
Sydney artists are being priced out of the city – here’s how to bring them back
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225031/original/file-20180627-112641-pp8x3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artists and creatives often work in industrial spaces, which are declining in Sydney. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sydney artists and cultural practitioners face growing barriers to working in or close to the city, according to <a href="http://doi.org/10.4225/35/5b05edd7b57b6">our new research</a>. This is because of a shortage of creative spaces, due to the disappearance of industrial buildings, and rising rents and property prices. </p>
<p>These developments affect not only individual artists, but also broader <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-9949-6_4">creative clusters</a> that need to be sustained by local networks and communities of artists and residents.</p>
<p>The cost of living, according to Samuel Hodge from creative space Clothing Store, has led to the exodus of a whole stratum of city dweller:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like the city itself, everyone I know is being forced out. So that’s one thing: people can’t afford to live, especially the artists, and anyone else who doesn’t earn enough money. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We interviewed artists and cultural practitioners from 18 venues and spaces across the City of Sydney. Most were from Redfern Village (including a creative company and a commercial gallery), and Green Square Village (including a non-profit gallery and a music studio). We also looked at a TV production company in Millers Point, as well as a pottery studio in Botany. </p>
<p>Artists and other creatives often use former industrial buildings and small warehouses. These are usually cheap, close to the city, and operate as creative hubs. However, many are being turned into expensive, often high-rise, residential apartments. The total <a href="http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/research-and-statistics/surveying-our-community/floor-space-and-employment-survey/2012-fes-overview-and-summary-reports">area of industrial space</a> decreased by 65% in Redfern between 2007 and 2012, and by 39% in Green Square. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-support-for-arts-funding-declining-australia-must-get-better-at-valuing-culture-95057">With support for arts funding declining, Australia must get better at valuing culture</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Artists are also often compelled to accept short and restrictive leases on places to work and live. Some told us that they were given a lease lasting just a few months because the properties were subject to development or demolition clauses. The result is a great deal of insecurity, making it difficult to plan their work schedules. </p>
<p>Matt Branagan from Work-Shop told us: “We were in George Street … We got kicked out of there because that was going to get turned into a gym – so we were only on a short-term lease”. </p>
<p>We also found that where spaces were available for creative work, they were more likely to be in digitally-oriented and commercial disciplines like architecture and design. The messier, more collectivist forms of experimental and industrial art are finding the inner city far less welcoming than in more bohemian times.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.corelogic.com.au/news/national-dwelling-values-fall-03-december-setting-scene-softer-housing-conditions-2018#.WxeN6UiFOUk">Dwelling values</a> have increased 70% over the past five years in Sydney. This is a major concern for artists, who usually earn only a modest income and cannot afford high rents. Australia-wide, the average income of professional artists in 2015 was <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/making-art-work-throsby-report-5a05106d0bb69.pdf">$48,400</a> (including non-artistic sources of income). Taking the significant costs of making art into account, the economics of creativity are clearly unsustainable.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gender-pay-gap-is-wider-in-the-arts-than-in-other-industries-87080">The gender pay gap is wider in the arts than in other industries</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many artists are leaving inner city neighbourhoods as a result. As Hugh Ramage, operator of Duckrabbit said, “You know people, they can’t afford to buy or even rent anymore, so lots have moved to Blue Mountains or beyond”.</p>
<p>Non-commercial or not-for-profit cultural operations, especially those supporting emerging artists or non-mainstream cultural forms, are closing. For example, well-known creative spaces in the city, such as <a href="http://lanfranchis.com/about.html">Lanfranchi’s</a> and <a href="http://scanlines.net/group/serial-space">Serial Space</a>, ceased operating because the buildings they occupied were sold. </p>
<p>As Pia van Gelder, former operator of both venues said, “If you can’t sell the work, if you’re not making it for a commercial show … you can’t sustain yourself”. </p>
<p>There is a common assumption that Sydney artists can easily relocate to other parts of the metropolitan region, especially to <a href="https://westernsydney.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1239999/recalibrating-culture-report.pdf">Western Sydney</a>. This is something of a misconception. There is already a shortage of creative spaces outside the centre, demand is rising from local artists, and inner city artists’ movement to the suburbs is only making the problem worse.</p>
<p>We think it’s time for governments and other interested parties to step in. We propose a “<a href="https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1618866711000732">place keeping</a>” approach to planning cultural venues and infrastructure that embeds key principles of inclusion and care. Partnerships across different sectors in the metropolitan Sydney region would help fill the policy gaps.</p>
<p>The City of Sydney has already developed an <a href="http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/213986/11418-Finalisation-of-Cultural-Policy-Document-July-2016.pdf">action plan</a> for its goals in the cultural sector. These include investigating cooperative housing and working with businesses to create more artist workspace. </p>
<p>The NSW government could introduce, like Victoria, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/planning-controls-to-boost-southbank-s-cultural-credentials-20180306-p4z32q.html">zoning controls</a> to stop the loss of creative space. Or it could introduce a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/community-infrastructure-levy">Community Infrastructure Levy</a>, as the UK has done, where local authorities provide infrastructure to support development. </p>
<p>We also encourage the formation of new non-government bodies like the UK’s <a href="http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SPACE-Key-Facts2.pdf">SPACE</a>, which operates artist studios in London. Likewise, there’s a role here for major cultural institutions, universities, and even property developers to provide more creative space for artists. These multi-layered initiatives are essential for dynamic creative clusters to thrive, not just struggle to survive. </p>
<p>If we don’t help our artists find good working environments, the culture of our cities will fall victim to the voracious demand for privately profitable real estate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wong is part of a research team at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University that has produced two independent research reports commissioned by the City of Sydney.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe is part of a research team at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University that has produced two independent research reports commissioned by the City of Sydney. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Teresa Swist is part of a research team at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University that has produced two independent research reports commissioned by the City of Sydney.</span></em></p>
The loss of creative spaces to development is pricing Sydney artists out of the city. But they could be encouraged back with new cultural policies.
Alexandra Wong, Engaged Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Teresa Swist, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82448
2017-08-16T05:15:33Z
2017-08-16T05:15:33Z
A new approach to culture
<p>“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas,” the composer John Cage once remarked, “I’m frightened of the old ones”. Last week’s announcement that the Myer, Tim Fairfax Family, and Keir Foundations are sponsoring “<a href="http://myerfoundation.org.au/news/announcing-a-new-approach/">a new approach</a>” to arts advocacy and research (and presumably research into arts advocacy) is a bright spot in the fungal gloom that has hung heavy over Australian cultural policy in the last five years.</p>
<p>Putting A$1.6 million on the table, the foundations called for expressions of interest in December 2016. The successful proposal is a partnership between <a href="https://www.humanities.org.au">the Australian Academy of the Humanities</a> – a reassuring, albeit conventional choice – and <a href="http://www.newgatecomms.com/">Newgate Communications</a>, a corporate relations firm. Neither are arts insiders. </p>
<p>They plan to deliver what Newgate Associate Partner Simon Troeth calls <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/audience-development/richard-watts/a-new-approach-announced-for-the-arts-in-australia-254227">“evidence-based policy advocacy”</a> that will “look beyond electoral cycles and support a long-term vision for a more sustainable, inclusive and vibrant Australian arts and culture sector.”</p>
<p>A welcome aspiration. In an <a href="https://dailyreview.com.au/advocacy-arts-needed-answer/63534/">upbeat article for the Daily Review last Thursday</a>, Esther Anatolitis gave a useful and inclusive round up of existing research in the area and suggested, like others, that consultation is now required to harness “conversations stimulated by the philanthropists’ provocations [that] have brought colleagues together in exciting new ways.”</p>
<p>There’s that word again: new. It’s a confronting one because it asks the question “new, how?” What kind of research will make a difference, and what does making a difference actually mean? Antatolitis alludes to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a confident future where the value of Australia’s arts could be expressed, quantified and advanced with compelling impact and tangible influence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here transformation is methodological rather than political. Proofs of value, trapped in the minds and computer drives of hard-pressed cultural organisations, are released into circulation, whence they have a positive effect. This is evidence-based research at its most fragrant. Data is communicated/policy change results.</p>
<p>But has any area of policy in the last 15 years, much less the cultural one, fitted this rational choice ideal? Taking a historical view of “the problem” of the value of arts and culture suggests a slightly different view.</p>
<p>From the late 1970s onwards, the increasing demands that the cultural sector produce evidence of its value have come from governments less and less inclined to support it; indeed, less inclined to invest in many areas of collective concern, and strongly desirous of redefining public goods and services as private ones, and marketizing them accordingly.</p>
<p>The replacement of policy debate over the all-important question “what kind of culture do we want?” by reticulated, quantified, assessment procedures stems from a moment in time when governments became fixated on getting “value for money” for taxpayer spend.</p>
<p>The monocular vapidity of this reduction belies its administrative adhesion and political use. If you are forever demanding someone “demonstrate” the benefits they provide, you never have to describe or defend the world you want them to be of benefit to. In the 1980s and 1990s, artists and cultural organisations disappeared under a tsunami of Byzantine evaluative and audit tasks that disguised the heavily partisan beliefs that produced them.</p>
<p>How did culture get mixed up in such world-withering logic? Under prime ministers Chifley, Menzies and Whitlam, cultural policy was part of “quality of life” legislation. Its role was first and foremost cultural, and it was supported, or not, on that basis. It fitted into a nation-building vision for this country. Australian culture was valuable because it was ours, not because quantitative indicators showed it was a reliable delivery mechanism for government-preferred externalities.</p>
<p>In the last 40 years, arts and culture have found themselves weighed against criteria and targets not of their choosing, while the sophisticated calculative practices constructed to do this have sometimes <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09548963.2017.1324014?journalCode=ccut20">exacerbated the alienated character of the situation</a>.</p>
<p>Restoring a sense of culture to culture’s evaluation is a priority for a new approach: developing a language of advocacy that is meaningful rather than “objective”, a standard of proof hard to square with the kinds of non monetary, long-term benefits the arts provide (some of the best work on this can be found in Robert Hewison’s 2014 book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/12/cultural-capital-rise-fall-creative-britain-robert-hewison-review">Cultural Capital: the Rise and Fall of Creative Britain</a>).</p>
<p>And behind the bespoke problem of the assessment of culture, lies the bigger job of resuscitating the idea of public value that has been destructively eroded by four decades of morally bankrupt ideological obsession. </p>
<p>If governments today are grappling with a set of issues from climate change to wage stagnation they seem powerless to redress, it is in part because this concept, which should have pride of place in all policy domains, has been displaced from its key informing position.</p>
<p>Australian culture is more than series of market preferences. It is more than a list of its impacts on well being, social cohesion, education levels, and the interstate sale of hotel beds. These kinds of things are useful to known. But an approach to cultural policy that is genuinely new must match the silver flutes of methodological verification with the golden trumpets of political change. It must change our idea of culture, not just the way we measure it.</p>
<p>That’s a goal that goes beyond the generation of data, though it certainly includes it. It’s about giving voice to culture as culture, and to the people who create it, promote it, and participate in it, on the same grounds. It’s about evidence of value, but also about the value of that evidence, and what vision of Australian society we want it to be serving.</p>
<p>For too long the primary experience of culture has been missing from the cultural policy debate. “A new approach” has the opportunity to ensure it is incorporated now. This is a moment to step off the evidentiary hamster wheel and ask what our culture is for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A new approach to arts advocacy and research could be the breath of fresh air the sector needs - or just more of the same.
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77432
2017-08-03T09:18:33Z
2017-08-03T09:18:33Z
Cycling pianos, BMX dancing and poetic swimming: sport and the arts belong together
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180703/original/file-20170802-20033-1r8upyl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Long</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sport and the arts are vital components of the UK’s national culture, but are often treated as though they are separate worlds, despite both being the responsibility of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is striking how few mentions sport gets in arts strategies and vice versa. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/culture-white-paper">Culture White Paper</a> published just last year has no place for sport.</p>
<p>Historically, sports and arts were not always so separated. Ancient Greek culture, for example, was quite comfortable celebrating the physical and the aesthetic together. But in today’s pigeon holes, the arts are typically characterised by the aesthetic and sport by competition. Yet the aesthetic of gymnastics, ice skating or diving is clear. Equally, events like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/turner-prize-10288">Turner prize</a> demonstrate that the arts are not averse to a bit of competition. And part of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-baron-de-Coubertin">de Coubertin’s</a> vision for the modern Olympic Games was to glorify beauty through involvement of the arts and the mind.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180695/original/file-20170802-23009-6tdgma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Copy of a third century BC Greek statue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pankratiasten_in_fight_copy_of_greek_statue_3_century_bC.jpg">MatthiasKabel / Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The government invests in sport and the arts not just for their own sake, but for the very similar social roles they are expected to play. Nevertheless, collaboration and partnership, never mind synthesis, do not come easy. Therefore, our team based around Leeds Beckett has been exploring how we might envision <a href="https://artsinsport.wordpress.com/">a modern synthesis of sport and the arts</a>. We recognise that people often do see sports and arts quite differently and different people feel comfortable in those respective environments. So how might we reconnect these two cultural spheres?</p>
<h2>Arty sport, sporty art</h2>
<p>Despite the separation of sport and the arts in government and popular thinking, a number of recent initiatives at local level show what can be achieved by bringing them together.</p>
<p>Some examples are eccentric and fun. When the first stages of the Tour de France came to Yorkshire in 2014, part of the route went up Cragg Vale – 968 feet of ascent over five and a half miles that is claimed to be the longest continuous gradient in England. A few weeks before the professionals arrived, another group of cyclists took on the climb as part of the accompanying Yorkshire Festival. Their challenge was rather different; riding up Cragg Vale while pulling a baby-grand piano with someone sitting on the stool playing music specially composed for the occasion.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180702/original/file-20170802-3522-1ws6dzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How many cyclists does it take to pull a grand piano up a hill?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamespreston/14490359247/">jamespreston/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others offer new creations. Last year, when the World Triathlon Series came to Leeds, there was an accompanying events programme. As I approached one of the locations, I could hear a beat boxer, but paid little attention. Then I saw that he was accompanying a BMX rider doing tricks on his bike. Later, Indian music also came from the speakers and they were joined by a classical Indian dancer. Dancer and rider performed a duet, doing their sinuous movements and spins together.</p>
<p>And at the Cultural Olympiad programme in Yorkshire, we came across the <a href="http://seaswim.co.uk/">Sea Swim</a> project in Scarborough, which grew organically to occupy a third space between sport and the arts. Participating alongside each other, poets swam and members of a local swimming club wrote poetry that affirmed their sense of place. </p>
<h2>Synthesis</h2>
<p>Some of these hybrids may seem gimmicky, but our project has revealed that such collaborations do promote new forms of creativity and experimentation. </p>
<p>Artists bring something different to sport and sport can present artists with inspirational ideas of physicality and movement. We found that such collaborations disrupt stereotypes of what constitutes art and sport; stereotypes that see (some) sports as being the preserve of working-class males and (some) arts as being for middle-class females. Just as the idea of competition is attracting increasing interest in the arts, so too is creativity in sports. This increases the chance of both arts and sports attracting new participants or audiences.</p>
<p>What’s more, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/case-programme">research evidence</a> and practical experience show how sports and arts together can help to achieve social inclusion with gains in education, employment, integration and community safety. The most clearly demonstrated benefits of greater engagement, however, are to be found in <a href="https://artsinsport.wordpress.com/resources/">improved mental and physical health</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178180/original/file-20170713-9618-bicy4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dance at Headingley test match.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Long</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Awkward relations</h2>
<p>But such is the normal separation of the two spheres that those who try to inhabit both can feel out of place in either. Think of the former England international footballer Graeme Le Saux, who, because he read The Guardian and went to art galleries, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/1999/mar/03/newsstory.sport4">was “naturally” presumed to be gay</a>. At an institutional level, people working in the arts or sports may benefit from protecting their own territories by keeping their distance. </p>
<p>We recognise the challenges that have to be addressed if stereotypes and organisational resistance are to be overcome so that the potential benefits from combining sport and the arts can be realised. As such, we have produced a <a href="https://artsinsport.wordpress.com/a-manifesto-for-the-arts-and-sport-together/">manifesto</a> which organisations and leading individuals in the field are invited to endorse.</p>
<p>The manifesto calls upon arts and sports organisations and their communities to start by talking to each other to explore collaboration and recognise that the search for new participants and audiences will be helped by new hybrid forms and practices. Cultural policies need to incorporate sport, and more generally all strategies for sport and the arts should acknowledge the other.</p>
<p>It is important to look beyond short term “demonstration” initiatives like the local ones described above and plan for the longer term. Where “partnerships” are established to address community need, we want both sport and the arts to be represented and funded. Community projects can be more successful if they offer both sports and arts, rather than providing only one or the other. We also advise that major festivals provide a showcase for experimenting with sports-arts collaboration projects.</p>
<p>The treatment of sport and art as separate worlds neglects the potential that might be fired by bringing these two fields together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Long receives funding from a range of public and third sector organisations for his research conducted at Leeds Beckett University. The research network that this piece derives from was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
He is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
Sports and the arts are now separated, but it wasn’t always like this.
Jonathan Long, Professor in Leisure Studies, Leeds Beckett University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79650
2017-07-25T20:08:37Z
2017-07-25T20:08:37Z
Not jobs and growth but post-capitalism – and creative industries show the way
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175132/original/file-20170622-3053-1m2990k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The creative economy is failing to live up to the fast-growing, young entrepreneurial image it promotes. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/14959708488/">Ars Electronica/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term “creative industries” was <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/42872_Flew.pdf">first applied</a> to the cultural sector by UK New Labour in 1998, and rapidly gained global traction.</p>
<p>It was a kind of Faustian bargain for the cultural sector, which gave up its traditional suspicion of commercial imperatives in return for a seat at the grown-ups’ table where the governmental big bucks were allocated. </p>
<p>Perhaps it was not so Faustian after all. It seemed the “new” economy was all about ideas and experiences, creativity and left-of-field innovation. That’s less a sell-out and more a win-win. As cities shed their dirty industries, the creative sector would provide new, more fulfilling employment, rewriting the rules of the old economy as it did so.</p>
<p>The problems with this narrative are <a href="https://currencyhouse.org.au/node/174">well aired</a>. Software (which had been included precisely to bump up the numbers) and advertising and marketing accounted for most of the <a href="https://www.acola.org.au/PDF/SAF01/6.%20Culture%20creativity%20cultural%20economy.pdf">employment growth</a>. </p>
<p>Outside these sectors (and often within) <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.1128800?src=recsys&journalCode=csid20">studies</a> showed persistent low wages, high debt, self-exploitation, precarious employment (the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/will-we-get-by-gig-economy">gig economy</a>”), multiple job-holding (“don’t give up your night job”) and a nepotism that comes with excessive reliance on networking. </p>
<p>The divergence between the shiny narrative and the mundane reality is now blindingly obvious (at least outside the consultancy reports). Few in the cultural sector do more than lip-sync to its hymns. </p>
<p>But is this simply a story of deflation, of promises reneged? Might there be another narrative?</p>
<h2>A new narrative emerges</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future, by Paul Mason (Allen Lane, 2015)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostCapitalism:_A_Guide_to_our_Future">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years the notion of “post-capitalism” has become more widespread. <a href="http://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/a-revolution-in-the-making/">Guy Rundle</a> has been talking about this in Australia, and <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Postcapitalism-Paul-Mason/9780141975290?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base1&utm_source=AU&utm_content=Postcapitalism&selectCurrency=AUD&w=AF45AU99ZZC1SZA80C5LAF4S&pdg=kwd-309568335522:cmp-680104063:adg-37898644947:crv-151944074570:pid-9780141975290:dev-c&gclid=CO3Vos2ky9QCFYuUvQodBOUJAg">Paul Mason</a> in the UK. </p>
<p>In part it continues the optimism about the transformative potential of new technologies that formed around the internet in the 1990s, and which gave the early “creative industries” agenda such a powerful charge. </p>
<p>But since 2008 many have felt that capitalism is no longer capable of delivering on that potential. It has been locking it up in monopoly platforms and extracting “rent” from what is essentially free.</p>
<p>Indeed, capitalism is intent on maximising short-term profit from these technologies while allowing the ecological catastrophe of climate change to let rip. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Revolution In The Making: 3D Printing, Robots and the Future, by Guy Rundle (Affirm Press, 2014)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/a-revolution-in-the-making/">Affirm Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rundle and Mason evoke the enormous potential of technological innovation, not just in communications but in medicine, materials science, agriculture, transport and the rest, but this potential is stuck in the old relations of capitalism. </p>
<p>Post-capitalism evokes not just the technology but the new kinds of social relations required for it to live up to its full human potential. They argue that these new technologies – distributed, networked, ideas-rich, decreasingly expensive – are giving rise to enclaves within contemporary society that provide a glimpse into a more human future. </p>
<p>Peer-to-peer networks, sharing and gift economies (for real, not Uber), open-source movements, non-monetary labour exchanges – all of these grow out of the essentially public and democratic nature of knowledge-based production and distribution. Capitalism squats on these new democratic forces, wringing profit from a knowledge it does not produce but seeks to own. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Postcapitalist Politics, by J.K. Gibson-Graham (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-postcapitalist-politics">University of Minnesota Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rundle is the more naive politically, while Mason, re-inventing a Marxist political economy long thought dead and buried, recognises that systems are not given up without a fight. </p>
<p>What stands out, however, is a sense that things are already changing. We need not wait for the big collapse, but can work in the here and now to effect real social transformation. </p>
<p>This connects with <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-postcapitalist-politics">the work</a> of <a href="http://www.communityeconomies.org/people/jk-gibson-graham">J.K. Gibson-Graham</a> and others, who see older forms of social activism as working towards a different kind of post-capitalist future right here, right now.</p>
<h2>Creating a more human future</h2>
<p>There are, and will be, many objections to the coherence of the term post-capitalism and the agenda it announces. But perhaps it can help us rethink the creative industries. </p>
<p>Rather than the narrative of the fast-growing, entrepreneurial, start-up economy moving us into the next stage of knowledge capitalism, post-capitalism gives us a different story. </p>
<p>The low-waged, under-employed, precarious creative sector embarrasses the policymakers by not being really serious about growth (“lifestyle”) and failing to live up to the entrepreneurial image promoted at all those glitzy creative industry events. But these low-growth, socially embedded and ethically driven creatives may represent a future far more convincingly than those MBAs in hip clothing setting out to be the next “unicorn”.</p>
<p>The job of the creative sector is not to produce “jobs and growth” but cultural value. Those long hours on low wages and short-term contracts are accepted (mostly) as the price to create something of cultural value, to alter the world a little bit, to make us see it in a different way, to critique and to celebrate ourselves, and to bind us together. </p>
<p>This ecosystem of micro-businesses, freelancers and serial project workers represents the vast majority of <a href="https://ccskills.org.uk/supporters/blog/freelancing-and-the-future-of-creative-jobs">cultural sector employment</a>. They have been systemically sidelined from the grand creative industries narrative, but are, in fact, its main business.</p>
<p>Arguments for culture dressed up as economics no longer convince anyone. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brandis-plans-to-insulate-the-arts-sector-from-the-artists-42305">George Brandis</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/reagan-called-america-a-city-on-a-hill-because-taxpayers-funded-the-humanities-74721">Donald Trump</a> and 100 right-wing authoritarian cultural budget cuts across the globe testify to this. </p>
<p>It is time to give up on the fiction of the creative industries delivering post-industrial capitalism. Instead, we should acknowledge the new ways of making and sharing, the commitments to community and place, the social labour involved in creative work as a powerful resource for wider transformation of our common culture.</p>
<p>And, at the moment, the future of that common culture points us toward some kind of post-capitalism – rather than simply more of the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Connor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The notion of the creative sector driving fulfilling work as cities shed old industries has worn thin. But those creatives might be delivering value of a different kind, offering a more human future.
Justin O'Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80954
2017-07-23T20:09:09Z
2017-07-23T20:09:09Z
How can our cities match Europe’s for finding value in their creative vibe?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178940/original/file-20170720-23992-1l9vijb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edinburgh is one of the European cities that make the most of their creative and cultural assets.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/topaz-mcnumpty/9425861004/in/photolist-fmW15U-fti4HW-2A8KwB-2A8BPF-fv8XzL-71UmQR-ftpCEa-oFPdEt-cNL8s3-fnyJkZ-fvxiQ7-acU4NJ-fQ4mEw-VeZbgB-nfGB2-fqLD6s-fqobox-fvLeCS-fmU94i-oU4ytV-5bXXpQ-5e2qPA-fzWWhp-fqmwUB-fu6Sns-fvyeUw-cMDtMW-xfPNM-ay7HPA-5f66XN-fncGas-9fBRmh-fmZvwT-2yehya-fmZxAD-fu5Jh1-5f1J9p-5fF58g-2ZEXt8-nfGB4-cNFgXL-cNA8rs-Vo1u9A-WqFPZt-fqLEsF-d5fyCs-5f1JnP-ay4ZTx-fmZrEM-fmZwCH">Hamish Irvine/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>European cultural and creative cities have stronger economic output and more jobs than their Australian counterparts. So why is our urban creative vibrancy associated with city size, not economic performance?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Culture nurtures our souls and binds our communities together, while creativity helps reveal new answers to our challenges and anxieties. Industries that build on creativity and culture are also a source of great economic value and social well-being.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So opens the latest European Union report, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/cultural-and-creative-cities-monitor-2017-edition">The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor 2017 Edition</a>. The report and supporting data represent an effort to measure something we all know is important – the creative vibe of cities. </p>
<p>Creativity is making its way more and more into policy discussions. Note the European <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/culture/policies/strategic-framework/strategy-international-cultural-relations_en">policy</a> announced last year, Towards an EU Strategy for International Cultural Resolutions, and the European Parliament’s <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P8-TA-2016-0486&language=EN">resolution</a> to deliver “coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries”. </p>
<p>Australia <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/89368/">lacks a current national cultural and creative industries policy</a>. There are clear parallels, though, with the national <a href="https://industry.gov.au/innovation/GlobalInnovationStrategy/index.html">Global Innovation Strategy</a>. Other innovation and creative programs are happening at state level, such as <a href="https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/growing-business/becoming-innovative/innovation-grants-support/innovate-queensland">Innovate Queensland</a>.</p>
<p>The European work shows that having cultural and creative cities can deliver significant economic benefits. The positive associations between cultural and creative cities and annual GDP per capita and jobs per capita are clear and strong.</p>
<p>Overall, they also found city size isn’t everything: smaller cities perform just as well as big cities. </p>
<h2>How do the biggest 36 Australian cities compare?</h2>
<p>We don’t have the data to construct the same metrics as the EU. However, based on the <a href="http://www.regionalaustralia.org.au/Great_small_cities_data_tool">publicly available data</a> from the Regional Australia Institute, we use the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/bohemian-index/57658/">Bohemian Index</a> as a proxy indicator for creative economy. </p>
<p>This index, <a href="http://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/6%20Bohemia_and_Economic_Geography.pdf">devised</a> by <a href="https://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/The%20Australian.pdf">Richard Florida</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/bohemian-index/57658/">measures</a> “the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas”.</p>
<p>Australian findings show no association between creatives and city output, measured as gross value added (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_value_added">GVA</a>) per capita. There is only a slight positive relationship between jobs and creativity, as shown below. In contrast, the European <a href="http://www.politico.eu/blogs/playbook-plus/2017/07/eu-identifies-the-ultimate-european-city/screen-shot-2017-07-06-at-13-39-30/">Creative and Cultural Cities Index</a> is highly and positively correlated to both GDP and jobs per capita.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1. Bohemian Index of Australia’s 36 largest cities and output (GVA) per capita and jobs per capita.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As we can see, there is a positive relationship between Australian city size and creative employment. This is the opposite of what the Europeans found. </p>
<p>So what do Australia cities share with European cities in the way of creative economy and economic performance? Basically, there is a positive and strong correlation between a city’s Bohemian Index and new business start-up rate, trademark rate (see Figure 2) and rate of business owners.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2. Bohemian Index of Australia’s 36 largest cities and trademark applications.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creativity also has significant positive associations with higher rates of bachelor degree qualifications or higher, housing affordability and commute time. </p>
<p>Disturbingly for Australia, creativity is positively associated with income inequality (measured as 80:20 ratio) as well. Does this mean that our cities with more creative jobs also have more rich patrons and poor arts students?</p>
<p>Importantly, not all cities perform the same. Our 31 regional cities show a significant and negative relationship between unemployment rates and Bohemian Index. Maybe the metro “Big 5” can learn from our regional city strengths in delivering stronger creativity and lower unemployment. </p>
<h2>What can Australia learn from Europe?</h2>
<p>Creative and cultural cities are obviously valued as important for global society, but European research clearly shows that these cities are also capable of delivering jobs and strong economic output. </p>
<p>Do we want all Australian cities to resemble Gladstone, with its high jobs and output, or Hobart, with its strong creative occupations? The Europeans have shown us we can have both in the one city – and not just in the big cities.</p>
<p>Importantly, if Australia follows a policy-transfer approach to creative and cultural cities, we should be cautious. These policies are also promoting economic performance in Europe, but what will they do here when we don’t see the same relationships?</p>
<p>While the latest EU work shows you can measure the cultural and creative aspects of a city, it does stipulate that this is not a be-all-and-end-all metric. It’s more the start of the discussion: how can we better measure our cities’ creativity and cultural values?</p>
<p>Europe uses three metrics (combining quantitative and qualitative data) to gauge a city’s cultural vibrancy, creative economy and enabling culture environment. The work is long and involved. Cities are required to provide information on 29 indicators – number of seats in a theatre, for instance. </p>
<p>We have just used one metric here, perhaps highlighting that poor data hinders good decision-making. A better measure of creative and cultural Australian cities could have provided different associations. </p>
<p>Australia is the “lucky country”, so why can’t we have it all – jobs and creativity in all our cities?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Pearson works for the Regional Australia Institute (RAI). The RAI is a not-for-profit think tank and receives funding from government and non-government organisations. </span></em></p>
A comparison of 36 Australian cities finds that, unlike Europe, the data on their creativity and culture are not closely linked to their capacity to generate economic value and social well-being.
Leonie Pearson, Adjunct Associate, University of Canberra
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74269
2017-03-08T14:56:11Z
2017-03-08T14:56:11Z
The UK’s rich musical heritage is threatened by a live music culture under pressure
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159970/original/image-20170308-24179-1ibgi8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">dwphotos / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the Proms to Glastonbury, the UK’s music has always been as clearly characterised by live music as bestselling recordings and star biographies. The rich history of our musical spaces illuminates the evolution of an array of musical styles and their social contexts.</p>
<p>But the relationship between music makers and policymakers hasn’t always been plain sailing – particularly when new genres burst into the public consciousness. Explaining Glasgow City Council’s 1956 decision to ban rock ‘n’ roll shows from its venues, the general manager of its City Halls Department <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zoK1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=We+do+not+think+this+kind+of+dancing+can+do+us+any+good.+In+any+case,+there+are+dangers+which+can+result+in+trouble+and+damage+to+property.+We+have+experience+of+what+can+happe">stated</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We do not think this kind of dancing can do us any good. In any case, there are dangers which can result in trouble and damage to property. We have experience of what can happens when this rock ‘n’ roll takes place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But by the mid 1960s, of course, rock was firmly established throughout the country as impressarios took it into theatres and cinemas. By the end of the decade, Pink Floyd had played at the <a href="https://www.wired.com/2009/05/dayintech_0512/">Queen Elizabeth Hall</a> and the Rolling Stones had staged a celebrated concert in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-YCqUMQ29U">Hyde Park</a>. From London’s Marquee to Liverpool’s Cavern, many of the venues of that era became as iconic as the acts that played them. The student union circuit became a seedbed for a generation of promoters, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/note-to-harvey-goldsmith-its-your-music-thats-dead-not-festivals-42698">Harvey Goldsmith</a>, and the site of legendary gigs, exemplified by The Who’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sanAHVITCDY">Live at Leeds</a> in 1970.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sanAHVITCDY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Challenging times</h2>
<p>Live events, across all genres, are also central to the UK’s music economy. In 2008, revenues from live music <a href="http://www.prsformusic.com/aboutus/press/latestpressreleases/pages/livemusiccontinuestooutperform.aspx">overtook recording</a>, becoming an ever more essential part of musicians’ livelihoods. And so there’s a greater need than ever for a range of venues, from pubs through to arenas, for fledgling acts to progress through as they grow their audience. But vital parts of this live music <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2015.1125633?journalCode=rrms20">ecology</a> have suffered in recent years. Grassroots venues are run on tight margins, and have been under pressure for some time from external factors such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/09/the-slow-death-of-music-venues-in-cities">rising costs and gentrification</a>.</p>
<p>Likewise, the surrounding policy context can add to the burden. Even without the outright suspicion on display over rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, local authorities’ licensing and development policies can militate against a healthy music scene if care isn’t taken to protect it. </p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2015, London lost <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-helps-london-music">35% of its grassroots venues</a>. This brewing crisis prompted a response, and the <a href="http://musicvenuetrust.com/">Music Venue Trust</a>, formed in 2014, worked to push the issue up the policy agenda, liaising with the Mayor of London’s office to form a <a href="http://musicvenuetrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/londons_grassroots_music_venues_-_rescue_plan_-_october_2015.pdf">Music Venue Rescue Plan</a> and appoint a <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-reveals-uks-first-ever-night-czar">Night Mayor</a> to champion the city’s night-time economy. </p>
<p>The Music Venue Trust’s research shows that the number of venues in the capital in January 2017 was <a href="http://musicvenuetrust.com/2017/02/rescue-plan-londons-grassroots-music-venues-making-progress/">stable for the first time in ten years</a>. But it takes a concerted effort, and the situation is febrile for venues up and down the country with <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/popular-edinburgh-music-venue-to-close-by-end-of-march-1-4380714">threatened closures</a> now a persistent refrain.</p>
<p>The government’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/06/budget-2017-final-plea-against-business-rates-rise">review of business rates</a> could see a rise in the level of rates they will pay of up to 55%. For some music venues, this could easily be the difference between staying operational or going under. This wouldn’t just be a loss to the economy. Local venues are a <a href="http://livemusicexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Cultural-Value-of-Live-Music-Pub-to-Stadium-report.pdf">cultural</a> as well as an economic resource. The social and musical networks they house are not easily replaced and the larger spaces, ultimately, depend on healthy grassroots for tomorrow’s headliners.</p>
<p>The challenges are widespread, and face venues of all kinds. A squeeze on funding has seen local authorities reduce their <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Funding%2520Arts%2520and%2520Culture%2520in%2520a%2520time%2520of%2520Austerity%2520(Adrian%2520Harvey).pdf">spending on the arts</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/oct/08/laura-mvula-school-music-cuts-wealthy-children">music education</a> also faces an uncertain future.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159973/original/image-20170308-24211-rwo8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Large venues such as the O2 Academy Brixton rely on smaller grassroots venues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/phonegigpics/17277033272/in/photolist-sjHj51-j7sep6-98Nqm7-GPR9w-j7ujUS-498wwA-j7v2cN-n9qeCT-hym1Qc-nBGXYs-nBGWBj-n9sfXG-6TbinH-j7sirK-h4eryB-5YfVFw-4MsqYc-8ueDke-6CgLER-9NgMMB-6CkVBb-8VT7Zu-aW1LRa-5JbpUB-3BpjFg-6CkUn7-6SUh9j-6vJ3T-6SXJgw-3WCL9B-ejHV7D-6TbeNk-9NjyM7-5JbjPZ-E7ZhpL-8EAcnn-81DpRg-69HDX7-3cxFa2-5Yg44h-6SQkkV-k1DVJS-6JThY3-6CgKLZ-5YbPgr-NmfAuu-PqHPH4-PqHPpD-PqHNRK-PqHMZ4">phonegigpics/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Soundchecking the UK’s live music</h2>
<p>The state of affairs, then, is finely balanced. On the one hand, live music in the UK is an immense economic and cultural asset, driving everything from <a href="http://www.ukmusic.org/research/music-tourism-wish-you-were-here-2016/">tourism</a> and civic pride to <a href="http://comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Report_Final-published.pdf">soft power</a>. On the other, the conditions for venues and music makers call for a carefully calibrated response from policymakers to manage the ongoing tensions. </p>
<p>This is the motivation for a team from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle to conduct the world’s <a href="http://www.uklivemusiccensus.org/">first national music census</a>. A snapshot census of live music across six cities – Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Oxford, Southampton and Brighton – on Thursday March 9 will gather observational data and information about audiences at gigs and concerts across genres and venues types, from open mic sessions in pubs, through city halls to an Olly Murs arena show.</p>
<p>Online nationwide surveys of audiences, musicians, venues and promoters running until May will provide the broader context, along with social media analysis. The research team has consulted with a range of <a href="http://livemusicexchange.org/blog/introducing-the-uk-live-music-census-matt-brennan-adam-behr-martin-cloonan-emma-webster/">key music industry and charity organisations</a> to arrive at a set of questions that captures the full spectrum of activity in a way that will be applicable to drawing up policy on a local and national scale.</p>
<p>Even in straitened times, government can still find ways to support live music if it has the right information. Lord Clement Jones, a driving force <a href="http://livemusicexchange.org/blog/hamish-birchall-on-the-live-music-act-2012/">behind 2012 legislation</a> to facilitate live music, <a href="http://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/03/05/higher-business-rates-could-threaten-live-music-venues/">noted</a> the value of up-to-date, comprehensive information:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Live music is facing a number of challenges at the moment, from venues closing down to the threat of increased business rates. However, data about the sector has so far been relatively scarce and mostly anecdotal, and so the much needed data collected by UK Live Music Census will help us protect live music going into the future.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pulling together diverse voices from across the live music sector to provide a cohesive picture of the situation will help to safeguard the routes from pub to stadium that have enriched our national culture until now.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>To take part in the UK Live Music Census, <a href="http://www.uklivemusiccensus.org">complete the online surveys</a> from March 9 to May 8. Help to build the picture through social media by sending photos or information about any gigs or clubs you’re at on March 9 to @ukmusiccensus (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/ukmusiccensus/">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/ukmusiccensus">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ukmusiccensus/">Instagram</a>).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is part of the UK Live Music Census team.</span></em></p>
Grassroots venues are run on tight margins, and have been under pressure for some time from external factors such as rising costs and gentrification.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/57976
2016-10-03T03:42:16Z
2016-10-03T03:42:16Z
Art for innovation’s sake? Lessons from our Canadian cousin
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119953/original/image-20160425-22383-1fo1lfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justin Trudeau sees the artistic and creative industries as drivers of Canadian innovation</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Trudeau#/media/File:Justin_Trudeau_at_the_Vancouver_LGBTQ_Pride_2015.jpg">vl04/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While the notion of “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40075400">art for art’s sake</a>” has been both <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/25/2/286/">romanticized</a> and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/90/6/879/">derided</a> across the ages, <a href="http://www.oecd.org/publications/tourism-and-the-creative-economy-9789264207875-en.htm">OECD</a> countries <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-is-a-one-word-poem-59878">do not support</a> the arts and the creative industries in a manner that would let most artists pursue their creative aspirations on a full-time basis.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/entire_document-54325d2a023c8.pdf">This adversity</a> means that many creative minds turn away from their artistic callings for fear of destitution. But society collectively loses out when there is a lack of avenues for artistic expression.</p>
<p>Even while setting aside the <a href="http://philpapers.org/rec/DAVTPO-76">philosophical case</a> for investing in a vibrant artistic sector, and looking at the problem from a philistine economist’s perspective, the underinvestment in the arts and creative industries is worrying because the contribution of these industries to both GDP and employment is both significant and growing every year.</p>
<p>A 2014 <a href="http://www.oecd.org/publications/tourism-and-the-creative-economy-9789264207875-en.htm">OECD assessment</a> of the creative industries found the sector created 7% of Australia’s GDP and 4% of its employment. In Canada it contributed to more than 7% of GDP and 7% of its employment. In the UK it was 5% of GDP and 8% of employment.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-with-the-program-brandis-releases-his-draft-arts-funding-guidelines-44186">funding</a> in Australia for artistic endeavours is generally heading in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-dos-and-donts-for-thinking-about-arts-funding-and-the-npea-46186">wrong direction</a>, with <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/deborah-stone/62-arts-organisations-lose-funding-from-australia-council-251271">wanton cuts </a>)across various key institutions that foster the arts and creative enterprise. </p>
<p>In contrast, Canada, a country with a similar <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-educated-and-underemployed-are-we-building-a-nation-of-phd-baristas-53104">demographic</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-malcolm-turnbull-can-learn-from-justin-trudeaus-spending-plans-52136">economic</a> profile to Australia, has promised to earmark significant investment in the arts and creative industries in the coming fiscal years. Led by the progressive government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada may offer an important lesson to us in terms of according resources to <a href="http://qz.com/602525/justin-trudeau-perfectly-articulates-the-value-of-diversity-in-childhood-not-just-in-the-workforce/">tap into</a> the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6172957-creativity-and-the-global-knowledge-economy?from_new_nav=true&ac=1&from_search=true">creative capital</a> of a society.</p>
<p>After a decade of severe spending cuts in the arts by the former conservative government of Stephen Harper that were <a href="http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/artists-hate-harper-but-he-doesnt-seem-to-care1">harshly criticized</a> by the creative industries, Justin Trudeau’s government is bringing a sense of renewed vitality to the artistic sector.</p>
<p>In the most recent Canadian budget, Trudeau laid out impressive plans to invest more than $380 million in the nation’s <a href="https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/cultural-and-creative-industries/">cultural and creative industries</a>.There are <a href="https://www.playwrightsguild.ca/sites/default/files/Cultural%20Industries%20Budget%202016%20-%20Global%20Public%20Affairs.pdf">numerous facets</a> to this comprehensive funding program, but three components are of particular note to the Australian context.</p>
<p>First, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will receive $150 million over two years – contrast this with <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/24/mark-scott-tells-press-club-sbs-could-be-cut-to-one-channel-under-merger-with-abc">our ABC funding cuts</a>.</p>
<p>Second, the Canada Council for the Arts’ budget grows by $180 million over five years, including a $40 million increase this year – in contrast to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-20/$105m-budget-cut-caught-australia-council-by-surprise:-emails/7185900">Australian Council funding cuts</a>.</p>
<p>Third, to stimulate creative industry jobs and curtail Canada’s grave <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-educated-and-underemployed-are-we-building-a-nation-of-phd-baristas-53104">youth underemployment</a> problem, Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy (and the <a href="http://www.pch.gc.ca/eng/1358260464627">Young Canada Works</a>) will receive an additional $165.4 million in the fiscal year.</p>
<p>PM Trudeau has used important venues such as <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/leadership-lessons-from-canada-s-prime-minister-justin-trudeau">World Economic Forum</a> to highlight the need for creativity and diversity as future levers of Canadian growth, and has incorporated the creative sectors into this innovation push.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/federalbudget/2016/03/22/canada-council-for-the-arts-getting-fund-infusion.html">favourable approach</a> towards the arts also allows for more robust engagements created along the lines of <a href="http://www.businessforthearts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BftA-business-case-for-funding-the-arts.pdf">public-private partnerships</a>, which <a href="http://www.tradeforum.org/Public-Private-Partnerships-and-the-Creative-Sector/">are known</a> to produce strong positive returns both in corporate and social terms. A decade ago, the corporate proportion of arts funding in Canada was roughly 20%, but a stronger public-side commitment such as PM Trudeau’s will help to draw in greater private interest.</p>
<p>As a result, it is expected that the long-term <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/arts-federal-budget-canada-council-heritage-1.3501480">funding plans</a> for the arts will help to bolster the opportunities for artists in Canada, who like Australia, live at the <a href="http://canadianart.ca/news/budget-2016-what-artists-art-orgs-need-to-know/">destitute margins</a> of society, with more than half subsisting on less than $18,000/year.</p>
<p>The American novelist William Lee once opined: “Artists, to my mind, are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ” Yet Prime Minister Trudeau’s legislative initiative to bolster the creative industries just might turn that sort of thinking on its head.</p>
<p>Also, does it hurt that PM Trudeau is himself something of <a href="http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/portrait-of-the-artist-as-pm-trudeau-sketch-goes-to-auction">an artist</a>? An ink and watercolour drawing by Trudeau went to auction earlier this year. Not surprisingly, given his vocal commitment to universal human dignity, it is a rendering of the beautiful avant-garde building that houses the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Canada.</p>
<p><em>This is the fourth article in our occasional series Making Art Pay. Others have explored the state of <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-to-next-for-arts-philanthropy-in-australia-63410">arts philanthropy</a> in Australia, Mexico’s innovative <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-pay-their-taxes-in-art-57669">tax policy for artists</a> and the state of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-give-up-your-day-job-little-has-changed-for-individual-artists-63385">individual artists’ incomes</a> here.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Usman W. Chohan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Canada, a country with a similar demographic and economic profile to ours, has a very different approach when it comes to arts funding. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, there is a renewed sense of vitality in the arts.
Usman W. Chohan, Doctoral Candidate, Policy Reform and Economics, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/58720
2016-05-03T00:41:36Z
2016-05-03T00:41:36Z
Exactly what is innovative about the word ‘innovation’?
<p>In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was “innovation” – at least, it was this time round. In 2015, the Word was “excellence”. And in the antediluvian era of the 1980s and 1990s, the Word was, variously, “access”, “diversity”, and “Australian”. </p>
<p>The Word may be different but the method of delivery is the same. The government lobs an “operator of policy capture” into the arts sector like a biblical enigma. Cultural organisations then engage in the fine art of scriptural exegesis. What does the Word mean? Is it one that reflects what artists are doing or want to do? Or is a problem, a Word that has to be inched round like a verbal precipice?</p>
<p>Last week Rupert Myer, Chair of the Australia Council, visited Adelaide to play the part of John the Baptist. At a specially organised <a href="http://www.ceda.com.au/events/eventdetails/2016/04/s160429?EventCode=S160429">CEDA lunch</a>, he interpreted the federal government’s <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/rupert-myer-arts-and-science-linked-by-innovation-and-creativity/news-story/280003d27694f701279e500d9d519d84">Innovation Agenda</a> for arts and culture: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The arts sector welcomes the spotlight on innovation. We are keen to see the policy unfold to recognise the critical interface between science and the arts, linked as they are by the common threads of creativity and invention.<br></p>
<p>The Government’s Innovation Agenda aims to “drive smart ideas that create business growth, local jobs and global success” with increasing value placed on the “development of ideas, collaborative thinking, and innovative solutions to complex problems”. <br></p>
<p>The Australia Council has invested in social entrepreneurs by funding schemes over many decades … If you want to lead the world in innovation, hire an artist and let them inspire. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In cultural policy, words are never straightforward, though that is no cause for cynicism. They always mean something, even if no one can say exactly what. So a game begins to use the Word in every possible situation as an all-purpose signifier. If that sounds surreal, what’s at stake is very real: funding, favour, and legitimation; sometimes organisational survival. </p>
<p>Myer is a good speaker. He has an intelligence, decency and personal warmth not even the government’s atrocious treatment of the Council has tarnished. At the lunch he was joined on the podium by cultural bigwigs Vince Ciccarello from the <a href="http://www.aso.com.au/">Adelaide Symphony Orchestra</a>, Rachel Healy of the <a href="http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/">Adelaide Festival of the Arts</a>, Douglas Gautier from the <a href="http://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/">Adelaide Festival Centre</a> and Nick Mitzevitch of the <a href="http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home">Art Gallery of South Australia</a>. </p>
<p>Arts warriors one and all, who have done the hard yards, and will continue to do them while braiding the word “innovation” into as many pronouncements as possible. As these people come from different art forms, this will be a bespoke affair, judiciously aimed at the fall out from the federal budget no doubt. </p>
<p>A few years ago, when innovation was a word (and not the Word), I was just starting my research into <a href="http://apjacm.arts.unimelb.edu.au/article/view/128">how language works in the cultural policy domain</a>. So hyper-focused is our Age of Numbers on quantitative data, that qualitative terms often pass into circulation without even cursory examination. </p>
<p>Innovation, for example, derives from the Latin word <em>innovationem</em>. It was first used as a <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation">noun of action</a> – “a new idea, device, or method” – in the 16th century. Until then, “novators” were treated with suspicion. A novator was a heretic, someone with deviant political or religions beliefs undermining the traditional power structure. </p>
<p>The word was turned on its head by the 19th French sociologist, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Gabriel-Tarde">Gabriel Tarde</a>. Tarde believed that social change required the stimulus of innovative thought. Innovation, leading to invention, would blaze a trail for the rest of society to follow. </p>
<p>Innovation signified an act of disruption creating new opportunities for emerging segments of the population while lessening the influence of established elites. Its association with words such as “rare”, “influential”, and “genius” improved its standing. It was a progressive and positive element within society.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, innovation became identified with market innovation. It shifted from a quality of thought to an intellectual commodity. Innovation was required for increased economic efficiency. It was something to produce and possess. </p>
<p>This is its aura today – as a mental ingredient sustaining post-industrial countries like Australia in a state of technological and economic advancement. So how does “innovation” apply to the arts? </p>
<p>Like all adjectives that have been repurposed as nouns, the Word doesn’t mean anything until used in a context. The first question to ask then is: “innovative <em>what?</em>” </p>
<p>At the CEDA lunch, there were mentions (in no particular order) of innovative objects, innovative programs, innovative audience development strategies, and innovative work place employment practices. </p>
<p>The Word does mean something. But its application to the arts is often metaphorical, illuminating some aspects of their operation while eclipsing others. As a standalone term, innovation need be neither applauded nor deplored. It is a place to begin a policy conversation.</p>
<p>The next question becomes “is the government serious about having that conversation, or will the Word be used in an ignorant and/or punitive way?” </p>
<p>This is essentially a query about the government’s trustworthiness, and in the absence of precisely stated intentions all we have to go on is its record in the arts thus far. </p>
<p>This isn’t good, and I left the event profoundly depressed, wondering, as I always do, what a simpler, more apposite dialogue about the arts might feel like. </p>
<p>The speakers at the CEDA lunch and others arts leaders in attendance, who included Australia Council Board members, deserved better. </p>
<p>All governments torture language. But the current one does so in a particularly airless way, as if it were talking to itself. Rachel Healy called the arts “a fractured ecosystem” and it’s an insightful turn of phrase.</p>
<p>Meaning and money are the enzymes of successful cultural policy-making. It’s debatable which is the more important. But it’s certainly possible to wreck the way you talk about the arts by vacuous, imperious, or extraneous terms. That’s not innovative, however you define it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was “innovation” – at least, it was this time round. In 2015, the Word was “excellence”. And in the antediluvian era of the 1980s and 1990s, the Word was, variously…
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/56525
2016-03-22T12:57:03Z
2016-03-22T12:57:03Z
Moving the collections from Bradford’s National Media Museum to London is a betrayal of the North
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115991/original/image-20160322-32294-1c2kdq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Street photographer, c. 1930, part of the NMeM collection.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Budget 2016 may look to have been kind to the arts in the regions. Museums and galleries are to receive tax breaks for temporary or touring exhibitions, though the Museums Association’s policy officer Alistair Brown <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/news/16032016-government-announces-tax-breaks-for-touring-exhibition-costs">highlighted the problem</a> that this failed to address “the fundamental problem of diminishing local authority funding”. </p>
<p>And it’s very unlikely that marginal tax breaks will make any difference to the circumstances of Bradford’s National Media Museum. It was recently announced that the artistic collections of the museum, which is part of the Science Museum Group, are to be deaccessioned to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Bradford is retaining those collections purported to be in the scientific and technical area of photography, still deemed relevant to the museum’s “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/national-media-museum-bradford-vandalism-fresh-start">fresh start</a>”: a new focus on the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). </p>
<p>This has predictably caused much heat. Some 80 established photography professionals, including Mike Leigh and David Hockney, signed a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/06/opposition-grows-to-bradford-photography-collection-move">letter of protest</a> which was sent to the national papers. </p>
<p>Concern centres on the impoverishment of Bradford and the North of England in favour of a metropolitan cultural holding already rich in photography. The creation of a super-collection at the V&A, which the acquisition of the collection of the Royal Photographic Society (the largest and most important of those now being disposed of from Bradford) would most assuredly amount to, is felt to be prejudicial to the government’s stated interest in devolving culture and economic power to the regions.</p>
<p>Shifting great sacks of treasure from the National Media Museum is certainly a betrayal of the north. The present government has been much given to a rhetorical trope about “<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/northern-powerhouse">the Northern Powerhouse</a>” it wishes to see develop. The truth is that the museum has been moving away from its original remit as a collections-based museum for many years. It was back in 2006 that it changed its name from National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. The reorganisation which accompanied the name change made many curatorial experts in the collections redundant.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116004/original/image-20160322-32291-datsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Poacher, Peter Henry Emerson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Royal Photographic Society Collection/National Media Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>London-bound</h2>
<p>Another strand of expressed dismay is about the way in which the deaccession decision was reached. If the Department for Culture Media and Sport had hoped that it was an operational matter for the Science Museum to decide how to effect the savings it deemed essential, large interest groups outside did not agree. I have seen a number of papers obtained under Freedom of Information rules which make it plain that although the trustees of the Science Museum and of the National Media Museum had been planning the deaccession in detail for some 18 months, they at no stage thought to offer them to any museums other than the Tate and the V&A.</p>
<p>A paper was prepared for a meeting of the board of trustees of the Science Museum Group on December 2 2015 by Judith McNicol, a director at the Science Museum Group, under the authority of Jo Quinton-Tulloch, director of the National Media Museum. It is quite explicit. “The art and cultural photography collections no longer fit with the aspirations of the museum and the focus on STEM,” it says in its introduction. It later says that “the two leading museums in this field, the Tate and the V&A, were given the opportunity to express interest in the collections. Both responded enthusiastically”. </p>
<p>We can be sure that they did. But we can also worry about these new aspirations. It is a novel museum which holds no aspiration to house one of the great historical collections in its field.</p>
<p>Why only London? There were other possible solutions to be explored. The City of Bradford has already invested a great deal in the National Media Museum and might have been able to put together a plan for keeping the collections under its control. The Science Museum’s other daughter house in Manchester, the Museum of Science and Industry, could have taken over the running of the Bradford Museum and savings could have been achieved that way. Not to consider these or any other solutions was a mistake. The public dismay made that plain. By then 27,000 people had signed an <a href="https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-cultural-asset-stripping-of-bradford-s-national-media-museum">online petition</a> against the deaccessions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116003/original/image-20160322-32300-ownn2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard and Cherry Kearton taking a photograph of a bird’s nest, 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Royal Photographic Society Collection/National Media Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘World’s best’</h2>
<p>There are other factors to take into consideration. One of those which seems to have gone very little mentioned is that the Royal Photographic Society collection was initially bought for the National Museum of Photography Film and Television with public funds. The Yorkshire Post was able to <a href="http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/city-snaps-up-world-s-best-photo-collection-1-2431213">report with considerable glee</a> on June 7 2002 – under the headline, “City snaps up world’s best photo collection” – that the collection would “make its home in Bradford thanks to a £3.75m award from the Heritage Lottery Fund”.</p>
<p>This funding, the paper was able to say, “establishes the medium as a vital part of Britain’s national heritage”. It is odd for a national museum under the tightest of financial constraints to dispose of substantial paid-for assets with no attempt even to affect to acquire value for them. Yet the deaccession is only contemplated as a gift for no consideration. </p>
<p>The V&A might absorb this vast extra holding in photography, and it is possible that – the betrayal of the north notwithstanding — the outcome will be positive. But there is no very sure guarantee of that. There are large costs to the V&A, and no word of whence they are to be defrayed. </p>
<p>So it is far from clear how that absorption can be made in practice. Simply to have offloaded the material — and with it the problem that there are costs in maintaining it and making it available to view — may have seemed satisfactory from within the boards of the Science Museum and the National Media Museum. It looks like a reinforcement of the large imbalance in cultural spending between London and the North of England, and it looks also like a major acknowledgement of defeat by the National Media Museum. </p>
<p>Mary Archer, chair of the Science Museum trustees, admitted as much in an extraordinary attempt to spin the situation in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/national-media-museum-bradford-vandalism-fresh-start">the Guardian</a>: “The Collection [of the Royal Photographic Society] is great, but in the past decade or so we have not been able to do it justice.” Whether all that can be described as satisfactory from a wider view of the national collections in photography remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francis Hodgson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The decision looks like a reinforcement of the large imbalance in cultural spending between London and the north of England.
Francis Hodgson, Professor in the Culture of Photography, University of Brighton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48091
2015-09-27T19:22:07Z
2015-09-27T19:22:07Z
Finding our identity: arts policy and the future
<p>The appointment of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister has provided a unique opportunity to resolve the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-senate-inquiry-into-arts-funding-a-new-live-performance-work-46751">ongoing stoush</a> between former arts minister George Brandis and the Australian arts sector. </p>
<p>Turnbull has voiced his desire for an Australia <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/malcolm-turnbull-disruption-is-our-friend-2015-9">“that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative”</a> - qualities that are in no short supply in our small to medium arts sector. </p>
<p>All this offers the opportunity to recalibrate, to take a blank canvas and create a new and bipartisan policy picture.</p>
<p>So let’s start from a wholly unconventional place. </p>
<p>Let’s say that Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” is founded on the understanding that a healthy civil society and a responsive economy value debate, new ideas, imagination, surprise and difference. </p>
<p>Let’s say it also acknowledges the arts are central to the national conversation because of their ability to inform our sense of who we are, how we work and why we value what we do. </p>
<p>Once this is established, we can start by recognising the arts’ greatest asset: the artist. When society supports its artists, it supports all the benefits that accrue with the making of their works. </p>
<p>An artwork, after all, is not simply the thing that is viewed or experienced but all the social and economic activity underpinning its creation and distribution. </p>
<p>Using this model, a cultural policy needs to be informed by those outside the arts who benefit directly and indirectly from artistic activity such as education, welfare, science, sport and related cultural industries. It’s not so much a new idea as a new orientation. For example, the European Commission mainstreams cultural activity through its economic and political portfolios. I will explore other examples in more detail below.</p>
<h2>First steps</h2>
<p>To begin with, cultural policy needs to be informed by cross-sectoral engagement. </p>
<p>Some 30 years ago the Australian artist <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2618117">Juan Davila advised us</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We should find a dialogue constituting ourselves as a difference, not as a peripheral “another”, but as a sustained contradiction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Put simply, Davila is saying we need to look at Australia not from how others see us but how we see ourselves. Our differences are pivotal to our identity; identifying them requires confident and intelligent self-reflection. </p>
<p>So we need to re-map arts policy to reflect our geography and cultural diversity. We need to look past our current default setting - a paradigm based on Anglo-American approaches that trap us in our colonial past - and look elsewhere to Asia, Europe and South America for ideas and processes to drive a new way of thinking. </p>
<h2>The Korean narrative</h2>
<p>There are fundamental and idiosyncratic differences between Korea and Australia in political history, geography and cultural politics, but Korea’s astonishing cultural development is an instruction in the value of understanding the complexity of national identity, and the centrality of the arts in defining and communicating it. </p>
<p>The key driver of this development is indeed identity or, picking up on Davila, the need to understand and communicate the value of one’s own identifying parts so as to distinguish oneself from others. Korea’s political culture understood that for its economic motivations to be understood, the basic Korean character and sensibility needed to be explained, communicated and appreciated globally. </p>
<p>The relentless <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/12/31/korea.entertainment/">Korean Wave (Hallyu)</a> of soap-operas, magazines, films, fashion, pop music, visual and performing arts has made a phenomenal impact on the rest of Asia. Even China is smitten. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cct.go.kr/english/hcac/vision.jsp">Significant initiatives</a> have sustained the Hallyu, including screen quotas on Korean films, the establishment of the Korean National University of Arts (KNUA) and the Asian Culture Hub City in Gwangju, an ambitious concept in urban design linking artistic thinking and practice to local and regional questions of Asian identity. </p>
<p>By appreciating the value of the artist as mediator, communicator and interpreter, culture has been able to play a central role in shaping a contemporary Korean identity through a clear narrative that resonates globally.</p>
<h2>Brazilian ideas</h2>
<p>A similar orientation occurred in Brazil around the turn of the century. Culture had been the domain of the the private sector until, in 2003, a new government decided the arts would become a reference point for the social and economic development of the country. Brazil’s cultural diversity has been affirmed via the <a href="https://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://www.cultura.gov.br/pontos-de-cultura1&prev=search">Pontos de Cultura</a> (Culture Points), which act like a drawstring pulling together more than 4600 groups and initiatives into a single network. </p>
<p>A completely <a href="http://dutchculture.nl/en/mapping/mapping-brazil-cultural-field-ministry-culture">new economy has been invented </a> and experienced by people for whom cultural activities pose alternative employment, fuller lives and social inclusion. </p>
<p>The Brazilian government approached cultural development with an inventive mix of playfulness and social responsibility. In 2014, the government gave low-income workers $25 a month for cultural goods paid for by an electronic card, with 90% of this “culture voucher” covered by employers who claim it on their tax, with workers paying the difference. </p>
<p>Announcing the new incentive, <a href="http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60265#.VgNL-I-qpBf">Culture Minister Marta Suplicy said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now we are creating food for the soul; why should the poor not be able to access culture? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The option of extending the benefit to workers further up the income scale provides the real possibility of injecting billions of dollars into the cultural sector.</p>
<h2>Belgian process</h2>
<p>From 1987-2015, the <a href="http://vti.be/en">Institute for the Performing Arts in Flanders</a> (VTI) became a significant agent of cultural renovation in Belgium.</p>
<p>VTI advocated for Flemish contemporary arts, explained it and articulated it to government, the sector and itself. Part broker, part advocate, part policymaker, part trendsetter and educator, VTI grew out of a set of real needs: it balanced argument for cultural growth with social and financial awareness. Its <a href="https://www.flickr.com/people/pluginandplay/">mission statement</a> reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Applied research is a major component of VTI’s work … (it) is applied to actual practices by means of descriptive and analytical fieldwork. In this regard, the performing arts are not simply the object of research, but also play an active part in shaping opinion. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Flemish led a renaissance in Western European contemporary performance, which has had far-reaching global influence. The intellectual capital grown by VTI has shaped this success. </p>
<h2>Process, ideas and narrative</h2>
<p>I believe a new Australian cultural policy needs such a new entity operating outside the funding paradigm. One that valorises the arts and acts as an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral mediator - in a manner akin to the Brazilian, Korean and Belgian examples I have examined above. </p>
<p>Its mission would be to come up with ideas that challenge established thinking. And by so doing it would provoke new ideas on how arts and culture interrelate with the rest of society as an expression of individual and national identity. </p>
<p>Then we would truly maximise our agility, innovation and creativity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pledger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What if Malcolm Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” imagines a healthy civil society and a responsive economy that values debate, imagination, difference and surprise - all provided by the arts.
David Pledger, Artist, PhD Student, School of Architecture, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46110
2015-08-14T12:52:20Z
2015-08-14T12:52:20Z
Comparison of National Gallery to Disneyland touches a nerve
<p>Staff at the National Gallery are on indefinite strike in a dispute about the privatisation of much of its visitor services and security provision.</p>
<p>This follows <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33858543">56 days</a> of strikes by members of the PCS union at the gallery since February. During some of the busiest months of the tourist season, many of the most famous exhibits at the gallery have been – and are still – inaccessible. </p>
<p>More than 50,000 supporters have signed up to the “<a href="https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no-privatisation-at-national-gallery">No Privatisation at National Gallery</a>” campaign, and the strike is the subject of ongoing debate on social media. Not surprisingly, given his opposition to privatisation and his <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">recent statement</a> of support for the arts, Jeremy Corbyn has declared himself in solidarity with the workers. This has become a very visible dispute, further fuelled by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/jul/23/museums-should-charge-entrance-fees">calls</a> to reintroduce admissions charges.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"608958753954758656"}"></div></p>
<p>One striker explained the industrial action in part by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/11/national-gallery-staff-strike-exhibitions-privatisation">predicting</a> the gallery’s transformation into a theme park. That comparison was reported in The Guardian:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can feel what’s coming. It’s in the air. They will turn the National Gallery into a big Disneyland of sorts. We definitely don’t want that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The privatisation of services is part of the National Gallery’s “ongoing modernisation programme” aimed at making it, among other things, more appealing to a “broader (and younger) audience”. Sounds good, but there is some subtext here that is difficult to unpack. The gallery gives away little in its <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/strike-action-statement">statement</a> about the strikes. </p>
<p>It would seem that such privatisations (and the National Gallery are not on their own here) are part of a move to redefine the “experiences” that “customers” have in their interactions with the “business” of heritage. Museums and galleries are of course not immune to the commodification of our media and culture more broadly. The fact that at every museum conference I have been to this year someone has mentioned Disneyland’s <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/">MagicBand</a> (a bracelet worn by visitors that stores their data, logs transactions and notes preferences with a view to providing a frictionless “consumer” experience) with a mix of awe and fear should perhaps tell us something about the direction of travel. </p>
<p>There are a number of terms that I hear repeatedly in the work I do with and alongside museums. Excellence. Resilience. Flexibility. Sustainability. The situation looks bleak, and is demanding creative and agile responses. Arts Council England’s museum <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/funding-programmes/museum-resilience-fund-2015-18/">resilience fund</a> – which runs until 2018 – is a case in point. </p>
<p>Let’s be clear, the museums sector is already constituted of different funding and business models; some already generate their own income, some receive subsidy from the state, for many it is a mix. Some are national, some regional, some local. Many are completely run by volunteers, quietly making it work against all of the odds. The sector’s diversity might be considered one of its strengths.</p>
<p>Those museums which receive public funding are acutely aware that they must continue to make the case for their survival, and to re-articulate their value in line with current political and societal priorities. As such there have been moves to highlight the important role museums play in terms of education, social justice, well-being and happiness; the <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-change-lives">Museums Change Lives</a> campaign for example. Evidence shows that at their best museums make people more curious, more connected and more happy.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the debate about museums as businesses seems not to be going away and is in danger of trumping defences of museums and galleries as public institutions. And then there’s the resurfacing of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/jul/23/museums-should-charge-entrance-fees">calls for the re-introduction of admission charges</a>. I am utterly perplexed by the persistence of this position. By all means have a debate about how museums can <a href="https://theconversation.com/museums-are-becoming-more-playful-in-how-they-ask-us-for-money-45186">fund-raise more effectively</a> – and they will need to, as the next tranche of cuts are announced – but let’s not return to a scenario where people feel disenfranchised and distanced from the collections they so often own.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are these visitors or consumers?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Museums and galleries are not stuck in the past. The museum staff that I have worked with strive to remain innovative and relevant, to do ethical and interesting projects with visitors of all kinds. They feel privileged to work with their collections, often alongside enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers. Cutting back their independence may only serve to hinder “modernisation”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of Sekhemka, sold by Northampton council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibilovski/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cultural sector is bracing itself for <a href="http://artsindustry.co.uk/latest-news/dcms-told-to-plan-for-40-cuts/1170">further cuts</a>. Free gallery admission is <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/comment/policy-blog/29072015-alistair-brown-charging-museums-free-entry">under threat</a>. Museums around the UK have been scaling back their activities and making redundancies. Some are even considering the sale of valuable “assets” from their collections (and in the case of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-33607855">Northampton Borough Council</a> the deed is done). </p>
<p>There can be “resilience” only up to a point. We have a moral and ethical obligation to ensure our museums remain viable and to protect them from becoming indistinguishable from other businesses. Disneyland is great for a day or two, but museums nurture relationships that last lifetimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Kidd receives funding from the AHRC and the ESRC.</span></em></p>
The debate about museums as businesses is in danger of trumping defences of museums and galleries as public institutions.
Jenny Kidd, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46058
2015-08-13T13:24:53Z
2015-08-13T13:24:53Z
Jeremy Corbyn is the only candidate with a distinct arts policy
<p>Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn has just published a widely praised <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">statement</a> on the arts. As in other policy areas, this sets out a pretty clear position that is distinct to the other leadership candidates. This is particularly significant because politicians’ statements on the arts and creative industries are so often bland, generic and interchangeable. </p>
<p>Indeed, it’s hard to think of another policy area in which there has been so little to distinguish what is said by players from the main parties. Take the following statements by way of example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A. We want this sector to continue to thrive so it’s important that government and industry keep working together to foster the right environment for creative industries to succeed and inspire young people to follow in the footsteps of the many creative heavyweights that Britain has produced.</p>
<p>B. From film to video games, fashion to architecture, our world leading creative industries are a veritable powerhouse. They drive growth and outperform other industries, with employment increasing at around five times the rate of the national average.</p>
<p>C. The success of our creative industries is crucial to Britain’s future jobs and growth and to rebalancing our economy. And the contribution of our arts and culture cannot just be measured in pounds and pence, it enriches, entertains and expands our horizons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These were written by Conservative Sajid Javid, Liberal Democrat Vince Cable and former Labour leader Ed Miliband. But can you put the name to each statement? (Answers at the end.)</p>
<h2>Bland support</h2>
<p>The same kind of language is used by the Labour leadership hopefuls. All the candidates have made bland statements in support of the arts at various times, often emphasising their vital social, cultural and economic contribution in one form or another. </p>
<p>We know that Liz Kendall likes hip hop, Burnham likes the Courteeners and Jeremy Corbyn likes John Lennon. But we know little about what might define their actual arts and creative industries policy. Andy Burnham’s <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/558290fc01925b0184000001/attachments/original/1438791117/ANDY_BURNHAM_MANIFESTO.pdf?1438791117">manifesto</a>, for example, doesn’t mention the subject at all (which is, perhaps, surprising considering that he is a former secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport). </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2455">asked by BECTU</a>, the trade union for film and television workers, the candidates’ responses were predictably banal. Yvette Cooper, for example, mentions the economic contribution of the creative industries, but argues that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We can’t simply see an economic case for the arts; we must defend the value and contribution the arts make to our lives … I see the arts as a fundamental part of our society and economy, and under my leadership they will be central to the party’s plans for government.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andy Burnham’s as woolly as the rest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/56675543@N08/14357429974/in/photolist-avVogz-qAE3yE-nSHzJ7-8i8YCr-8i93QB-8iciS5-8ibYCQ-8i8hRn-8ibYm1-p6uSeM-8ic5Z5-8ibUZS-8ibxd7-8ickL7-8i8ghp-7BNVub-5R2Ef5-5ojv1P-nSHzHA-5QXoKg-6z4iZ1-5R2F6o-egL7UU-dRi8UC-9gFBHo-8ibB9L-u9KbHP-8i8x5g-8i8Q9K-8i99yF-8ibSN7-8icezj-8i9yWM-8i8U9H-8i8WjV-8icPyU-8i8kBt-8ibzTw-9uwxVV-8icRxU-7eJpuQ">NHS Confederation/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Andy Burnham focuses on the importance of technical skills, training and education, telling us: “I know how important our creative industries are, not only to the UK economy, but as a vital part of our national identity.” And he has <a href="http://birminghameastside.com/2015/07/03/labours-candidates-highlight-the-importance-of-culture-and-creative-industries-in-birmingham/?isalt=0">elsewhere</a> praised the “the power of art and culture to regenerate people and communities.” So far, so generic.</p>
<p>For Kendall there is none of this touchy-feely community rhetoric: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have superb technical skills in this country. They are in demand across the world. From those working in sound and lighting to our cameramen and women. As Labour’s first woman leader, I will ensure this talent can face the future with the confidence our cultural growth demands they must have.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jeremy Corbyn is the only candidate to talk specifically of the arts and creative industries in a meaningful way. His <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">statement</a> goes much further than the others, advocating public funding for culture at the community and regional level and tearing into the “callous commercialisation of every sphere of our lives”. Corbyn particularly highlights the arts as sites of political and cultural dissent as something essential to democracy. In contrast: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This government has savaged arts funding with projects increasingly required to justify their artistic and social contributions in the narrow, ruthlessly instrumentalist approach of the Thatcher governments … The arts must never be the preserve of those with privilege but open to all. Access and diversity within the arts must be improved with greater equalisation of those who are able to benefit from public funding as well a more even regional allocation of funding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to see how he has won the <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/12/art-world-reacts-to-corbyns-anti-cuts-message/">support</a> of figures such as Ken Loach, Maxine Peake and Josie Long.</p>
<h2>The BBC</h2>
<p>The future of the BBC is surely one of the most important things that a future opposition leader will have to contend with in the face of unprecedented Conservative attacks and all the candidates have made public statements in support of it. Trying to get to grips with what direction they might take, then, often comes down to a matter of emphasis and an acknowledgement of their wider politics and priorities. Cooper, for example, ominously <a href="https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2455">talks</a> of “defending a reformed BBC fit for the future”, while for Burnham, the Tory attacks are simply “wrong”.</p>
<p>Once again, it is Corbyn who presents the most clear and coherent sense of an opposition, saying that he wants “to see the Labour Party at the heart of campaigns to protect the BBC and its license fee”.</p>
<h2>Corbynmania and the arts</h2>
<p>The key theme of the Labour leadership campaign has been the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing politics among grass roots labour supporters and the intense hostility this has provoked in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the media. The big question is whether this popularity can become a movement strong enough to challenge the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated mainstream British politics since the mid-1990s. If it can, then it will certainly also challenge the constricting, conformist dogma that surrounds the creative industries.</p>
<p>This is desperately needed. A space for experimentation with new forms of cultural policy could raise hopes for new kinds participation beyond the metropolitan elite and catalyse a new infusion of politics into art. Most importantly it would create an argument over the respective roles of the state and business in culture. And culture badly needs a new argument.</p>
<p>If it can’t, then we are likely to get more of the same bland, generic conformism from all sides of the house.</p>
<p><em>Answers: a=Vince Cable; b=Sajid Javid; c=Ed Miliband.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Newsinger is registered as a supporter of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
Political discussion about the arts and creative industries is famously woolly ybland, generic and interchangeable. But Corbyn cuts through this.
Jack Newsinger, Lecturer in Media and Communication , University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41681
2015-05-15T02:07:40Z
2015-05-15T02:07:40Z
The arts minister has wrenched our culture away from the artists
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81768/original/image-20150514-28638-1s4tplp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Brandis shocked the arts sector – and particularly the Australia Council – with his overhaul of the allocation of arts funding.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Budget: The Longer View. The dust has begun to settle on Tuesday’s federal budget – and some key issues and themes are emerging. What are they? This long-read essay is part of a special package intended to answer that question.</em></p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Marx correctly summed up the situation: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them – well, I’ve got others”. That’s Groucho Marx – not Karl. </p>
<p>Last year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/federal-budget-2014">federal budget</a> was, er, last year. <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/federal-budget-2015">This year’s budget</a> appends another kind of reality. The winners and the losers are different too. After three days of picking over the details, the results for most commentators are clear: the arts lost out. </p>
<p>That is particularly <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-money-for-the-arts-in-the-budget-but-with-strings-attached-41676">true for the Australia Council</a>, subject to a A$7.2 million efficiency dividend, removal of three core programs, and the reapportionment of 16% of its operating budget to a Minister-led National Programme for Excellence in the Arts. </p>
<p>The “boring” budget is not only about money, however. It is also about trust. At the time of the last election, talk of austerity was a godsend for the Right of the Liberal party, who saw in our changed national circumstances the cue for what they call “further economic reform”. This is only partly economic. The other part is a political vision of Australia in which market deregulation, lower taxation, reduced social services, and transnational trade agreements play an ever more dominant role.</p>
<p>Last year, the wheels fell off the austerity roller coaster big time. The irony is the arts did well out of the situation, at least according to the Minister for the Arts, George Brandis. They were “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-24/tony-abbott-says-arts-funding-narrowly-escaped-further-cuts/5475632">protected</a>” from austerity’s financially flattening effects. This year, with the roller coaster in for repairs, they are less “protected”. </p>
<h2>Artists and arts ministers</h2>
<p>Like the warning cackle of ancient Roman geese, the complaints of artists let you know how close to the gates the barbarians have come. Even those who couldn’t give a stuff about cultural policy should pay attention to the changes because how the sector is treated is indicative of the government’s deeper attitudes. </p>
<p>Tone is crucial, as is sound thinking, and flair – important for an area where the goods supplied (art) are heterogeneous and sometimes controversial. </p>
<p>Many people who want to be artists later discover they are not suited to the role. The same is true of arts ministers. Since taking on the portfolio, Senator Brandis has seemed uncomfortable being Australia’s Medici-in-chief, stroppy when dealing with its paradoxes and challenges. </p>
<p>He appears to want to shape the arts agenda but has offered no positive vision for the future, no articulation of what kind of national culture he hopes to see. He sends mixed messages at a time when clarity of purpose and institutional stability are at a premium. </p>
<p>It is through the lens of Ministerial confusion the recent changes to the arts budget should be viewed. The confusion is not all the senator’s making – there are some systemic issues, which I will touch on in a moment. But his time in office isn’t helping these, and seems to be making them worse. He means well (yes, really). </p>
<p>But his attempts to circumvent his own cultural agencies in pursuit of an inchoate idea of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-budget-to-rebuild-trust-but-not-trust-in-the-australia-council-41750">excellence</a>” only reflect the underlying inconsistencies in the government of which he is a part. </p>
<h2>The systemic issues</h2>
<p>There has been a lot of <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">talk</a> in the media about the importance of the “arms length principle” in the Council’s disbursement of its annually allocated funds. But the principle isn’t unequivocal. </p>
<p>Is the Council at “arms length” from the government – or from the cultural sector? Or from both? Is it a “double arms length principle”? Does it represent the views of artists to the government or the government’s to artists? </p>
<p>These questions have haunted the Australia Council from the beginning. </p>
<p>In 1975, the Whitlam government granted the agency statutory independence. The very next year, it was the subject of no less than six official reviews, while its then-CEO, Jean Battersby, was deposed in the ugliest of Canberra-induced coups. </p>
<p>Since then the Council’s history has been one of incessant restructure, culminating in the recent <a href="http://apo.org.au/research/review-australia-council-may-2012">2012 Trainor Review</a>, whose recommendations were actioned last year as part of its new Strategic Plan. The Australia Council’s lot is not an easy one. The arms length principle is more like a convention, requiring trust and good faith on all sides.</p>
<p>Added to this are the complications of peer review. One person’s expert panel is another’s closed shop. It is not at all obvious that artists are the only ones capable of making decisions about arts grants. Over the years, this has been another area of controversy for the Council. </p>
<p>Again, the most recent reforms flow from the Trainor Review, which gives increased powers of oversight to the Minister under a new arrangement of assessment committees. Again, to be effective there must be a shared understanding between stakeholders, a collective awareness that the operation of cultural subsidy in modern democracy is a difficult and contradictory process. </p>
<h2>The personal issues</h2>
<p>It is unimaginable that a federal Arts Minister with a mind for his portfolio wouldn’t know this history; wouldn’t know that the Council has been harried and hurried by successive governments of all persuasions and requires a period of calm to recover and redeploy. </p>
<p>Yet Senator Brandis has furnished the opposite, inaugurating another “shake up” and springing it on the agency out of the blue. Apart from anything else, it is shabby way to treat the Chair, Rupert Myers and the CEO, Tony Grybowski, not to mention their no-doubt thoroughly demoralised staff, who must be wondering when the nightmare of arbitrary change will end. </p>
<p>Both <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-13/eltham-brandis-extraordinary-raid-of-the-australia-council/6467534">Ben Eltham on The Drum</a> and <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/brandis-pulls-the-trigger-on-artists/23894">Ben Neutze at the Daily Review</a> have drawn attention to the illogic of some of the statements ensuing from the Minister’s office. </p>
<p>That the majority of arts funding goes to projects “favoured by the Australia Council”, in the words of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/federal-budget-2015-australia-council-loses-104m-funneled-to-arts-ministry-20150512-1mzjxi.html">one of these</a>, is surely no surprise given the Council is responsible for handing the majority of arts funding out. </p>
<p>Nor does Senator Brandis’s desire to “respect popular taste” marry with the core purpose of cultural subsidy, which is presaged on “market failure” arguments. And with good cause. In the last century, it has often happened that work later lauded as “excellent” has been publicly traduced on first appearance. </p>
<p>It is the gap between art’s present reception and its future value that provides the Council with its <em>raison d’etre</em>. </p>
<p>And finally, how will the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts work in practice? There is nothing wrong with a Ministry model of arts funding in theory. But Canberra’s public service has few of the bureaucratic features (size, stability, authority) that make arts ministries viable in Holland or France, for example. </p>
<p>Indeed, the reason the last Labor government transferred the Playing Australia and Festivals Australia programs from the old Office of the Arts to the Council was because of their potential to be pork-barrelled by politicians in marginal seats. </p>
<p>The more the 2015 arts budget is examined the less sense it makes. The changes contribute little strategically – the majority of funding remains locked up by the major organisations. They do nothing politically; just make an entire sector nervous by providing no operational plan. </p>
<p>And they do nothing culturally; save perpetuate uncertainty about which art and artists to support. Not the sort the Council likes to fund, apparently, which is a sizeable cross-section of work and people. </p>
<p>Senator Brandis is a thoughtful man, a true liberal in the Deakin and Menzies mould. He has written eloquently about the tension in his party – a party that under John Howard and Tony Abbott has moved emphatically to the Right – between conservative and liberal traditions. </p>
<p>He reflected on that tension when delivering the 2009 <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/we-believe-the-liberal-party-and-the-liberal-cause/story-e6frg6zo-1225791120808">Deakin lecture</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is easy […] to forget what it is that makes us liberals, and […] the Liberal party has sometimes forgotten it too […] Menzies said it best in five simple words: “We have stood for freedom”. That is our legacy. That is our purpose as a political movement […] And that is our path to the future.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sentiment abrades sharply with the autocratic aura of the 2015 arts budget changes. In both the way they have been rolled out, and in their consequences, they do not speak of freedom. They speak of control. </p>
<p>And here the cackling of artist-geese gets louder. This is a government that says one thing and does another. It is a government with iron in its soul, fighting for a view of the world that goes beyond asset write-offs and bankers’ bonuses. Something I suspect that is also true of Senator Brandis, under the sway of a leadership whose motivations he surely does not share. </p>
<p>To amend Groucho: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful budget – but this wasn’t it.” </p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-budget-to-rebuild-trust-but-not-trust-in-the-australia-council-41750">A budget to rebuild trust – but not trust in the Australia Council</a><br>
<a href="http://theconversation.com/post-budget-we-need-strong-cultural-leaders-more-than-ever-41680">Post budget, we need strong cultural leaders more than ever</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-money-for-the-arts-in-the-budget-but-with-strings-attached-41676">There’s money for the arts in the budget – but with strings attached</a><br>
<a href="http://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">Arms length? Forget it – it’s back to the Menzies era for arts funding</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The more the 2015 arts budget is examined the less sense it makes. The changes contribute little strategically or politically – they just make an entire sector nervous. And culturally, they will improve nothing.
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.